


where the wolf is one with the wild

by rainsnowandflowers



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Wolf's Rain, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Werewolves, established amon x akira, extremely minor nishio x kimi, flowermaiden!hinami, halfwolf!kaneki, hide has adhd, if a character is a ghoul it doesn't mean they will be a wolf, kaneki has anxiety, knowledge of Wolf's Rain not needed, minor touka x yoriko, only sorta!!, slowburn hide x kaneki, they havent shown up but will be written as nb, they/them pronouns for suzuya juuzou, wolf!ayato, wolf!hide, wolf!nishiki, wolf!touka
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:08:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 43,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28172922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainsnowandflowers/pseuds/rainsnowandflowers
Summary: Two hundred years after an apocalypse, what remains of humanity lives in scattered shambling cities ruled by the uncaring upper-class of Nobles. A legend exists that says that wolves will lead the way to a promised Paradise, but none have existed for centuries. At least, that is what Kaneki Ken believes until he comes face-to-face with wolves disguised in human shape, and is thrust onto a journey to find the foretold Paradise with a ramshackle pack at his side, chased by humans and Nobles alike.---Alternate Universe based on the universe of Wolf's Rain by Studio Bones, no knowledge of Wolf's Rain is needed
Relationships: Amon Koutarou/Mado Akira, Kaneki Ken | Sasaki Haise/Nagachika Hideyoshi, Kirishima Touka/Kosaka Yoriko
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	1. first encounter / flower lab

**Author's Note:**

> hey, thanks for clicking! in the story i try to explain as much of the setting of Wolf's Rain as possible (and also mix it up as i see fit) but pretty much it's set in a post-apocalypse where people and cities still exist, but everything is in decline dystopia-style. technology is highly limited by class, and the majority of common folk struggle to get by. wolves are said to have gone extinct 200 years prior but unbeknownst to humans, they can take the shape of humans and live among them. in the show, they basically look human in one shot and then like a wolf in the next and can switch between the two, but wolves, other animals and especially perceptive humans may be able to see through the human form. 
> 
> title is taken from track 16 of the Wolf's Rain OST, [run, wolf warrior, run](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD8iT_FQ4p8)

“You’re like me, aren’t you?” Rize asked softly, her hands twirling through her long purple hair. A neon light from outside reflected onto her glasses, partially obscuring her eyes and expression. 

“What?” Kaneki blurted out quickly, before trying to formulate a proper answer. “Well, I mean we’ve got a bunch in common. We both like the same authors, and we seem to have the same taste in books in general.” He picked up his copy of the book he’d bought while shopping with Rize, a large image of a wolf emblazoned on the cover. While fantasy wasn’t particularly his thing, he was willing to try something Rize had recommended to him. 

Rize cast him a small, surprised look from behind her red frames, before nodding her head slightly. “Yeah. We both like books.” 

Rize was an interesting person, so Kaneki thought. She was pretty, of course, but she was also smart, and very well read. Rize had read almost every book Kaneki had tried to recommend to her, and then recited the plots of dozens more around the small bookstore they’d visited together. She seemed to be especially interested in wolves, judging by the book she’d recommended to Kaneki and the small wolf-shaped charm on her bag. 

“We both like wolves, as well,” he added awkwardly, indicating towards the book, and Rize gave a small smile. In truth, it was Rize’s wolf charm that had first caught Kaneki’s attention. For some reason, he’d always been fascinated with the extinct creatures. For his whole life, he’d struggled to get the image of a wolf, strong and powerful, graceful but also dangerous, away from his mind. His aunt had always chastised him for this, telling him to get his head out of dusty old books from the past. There were no wolves alive today, they’d all gone extinct 200 years ago during the Greater War, she’d remind him. 

“Do you think wolves are real?” Rize said suddenly, catching him off-guard. 

“Of course!” replied Kaneki, “I’ve seen them.” Rize perked up immediately, and Kaneki realised he needed to clarify. “Stuffed ones, I mean. At the Lord’s House. He has a huge collection of extinct animals on display, I got to visit when I was in school.” 

Rize seemed disappointed in his answer, and he couldn’t blame her. The stuffed creatures at the Lord’s House seemed miles away from a real wolf, just a dusty and faded recreation of what was once a proud creature. While he’d been excited as a child to finally see a real wolf, his enthusiasm had quickly waned and left him feeling sad when he’d seen the exhibit. 

“They say there’s still wolves out there, you know.” Rize said, her gaze fixed on the small charm on her bag. “To survive in the new world, they bewitched humans and lived among them.” Kaneki paused. Was this related to the plot of the fantasy book that he’d purchased with her? Some part of it seemed to remind him of a story his mother had told him when he was much younger, however. 

“You’re not from Seventh City, are you, Rize-san?” Kaneki asked, realising he’d been staring. 

“Oh no. I’m more of a traveller,” she responded quickly, her eyes travelling towards the windows of the small café. “This is only the second domed city I’ve been in, though. This one is much darker than Third City.” 

“Since we’re further inland, it’s harder to get the necessary electricity,” Kaneki replied, repeating the facts he’d been taught as a child. “The dome does help the city cope with the weather a lot better, though.” 

Rize nodded slightly, “Yes, it was hailing when I arrived, and you can hardly tell from the inside.” She sighed a little, turning back to Kaneki. “It feels a little claustrophobic, I think. You can’t see the sky.” 

“It’s a little strange, until you get used to it,” replied Kaneki. He wasn’t sure what else to say, as he’d never really been outside the cold city. It cost far too much money to travel any further than the small suburbs on the outside of the dome, and he was just a poor college student. He was far from a noble like the city’s Lord, able to fly to other cities on a whim. 

The conversation continued slowly, until Rize suddenly checked her watch and announced that she needed to get back home. Trying his best to impress her, Kaneki offered to show her home, which Rize immediately accepted. Her smile made Kaneki hopeful that maybe she really was interested in him, and his stomach seemed to fill with butterflies at the thought. 

“Time flies so fast when you can’t see the sun,” Rize said as they walked between the tall and shambling buildings. All of Seventh City was like this, it was far from the capital that received all the government funding and had been left to sit and rot after the War. Yet people continued to live there, regardless of the failing electricity and the difficulties importing food, partially because it was their home and partially because there wasn’t anywhere else to go. 

Unlike the bigger domed cities, there were no glass panels in the massive overhead structure that would allow you to see the sun that Rize knew. The dome in Seventh City had panels that were thin enough that during the summer you could still feel the sunlight coming through, but for now, during the winter, the entire dome was almost always dark and lit electrically. The city was cold, run-down and shadowy, but it was Kaneki’s home. He briefly wondered what had convinced Rize to travel this far north. 

It wasn’t too late at night, and many people were walking in the main streets Kaneki led Rize down, illuminated by flashing neon signs. He’d never liked being in the heavily populated areas and gave a sigh of relief as they turned from the main roads and into smaller streets and alleyways. 

While the backroads were much quieter, they weren’t exactly empty. Two young school-aged girls walked past with one stopping briefly, staring at Rize and then at Kaneki. The girl frowned, glaring at them, before her friend called to her. 

“Hmm, she didn’t seem happy,” Rize said after she passed, turning back slightly. 

“Some people just happen to be like that,” replied Kaneki. “And some animals. Animals never really liked me either, I’ve been chased by a few dogs.” 

Rize gave a light chuckle and pointed towards a rusted street sign. “I believe it’s this way,” she said, leading him towards a small civilian underpass beneath the trainline. 

She seemed to speed up until she stopped in the middle of the underpass, and Kaneki rushed to catch up with her. An evening train passed overhead, the noise echoing into the small, dimly-lit space below. 

“Kaneki-kun,” Rize started, facing away from him, and paused briefly. “What are you?” 

“Excuse me?” Kaneki replied, giving her a confused look as he hurried back to her side. “What do you mean?” 

“Why do you smell … like that?” she said suddenly, avoiding eye contact. “You smell like lunar flowers, and like a wolf. But at the same time, you … don’t.” 

“I’m sorry?” Kaneki responded, confused. Almost instinctively, he sniffed at his armpits, trying to understand what she’d meant. How could someone smell like a wolf? 

He looked back to Rize and a large smile grew across her face as she moved closed and shoved him forcefully, pushing him to the ground. Kaneki fell backwards and looked up in confusion, and suddenly it wasn’t the demure Rize in her pretty white dress but instead a huge, fanged black dog breathing down on him. 

He yelped and tried to scramble backwards, away from the dog. But it wasn’t a dog, was it? It was more like the illustration on the cover of his book, the charm on Rize’s bag. The stuffed beast he’d seen at the Lord’s House years ago. A wolf. 

“You can’t be just a human,” Rize’s voice said, and Kaneki’s eyes widened as he realised where her familiar voice had come from. She was the wolf. 

He tried desperately to scramble away, but Rize’s jaws caught his leg as he stumbled and he fell to the ground again, screaming in pain and cradling his foot. Rize’s words at the restaurant echoed in his head - To survive in the new world, wolves bewitched humans and lived among them.

“You’re very confusing,” Rize grinned as she moved her jaws away from Kaneki, blood staining her wolfish maw and perilously sharp teeth. If he stared closely, he could see the vague outline of the human form she’d held before around the wolf, seemingly mocking him. “You really want to be a human, don’t you?” 

She bent down to look at Kaneki, tail wagging slightly and head cocked to the left. “Or is this a game? I can play games.” 

Kaneki brought his hands to guard his face reflexively as the wolf lunged at him and her jaws locked around his wrist. He screamed again and tried to rip his hand away unsuccessfully, Rize growling and her fangs digging into Kaneki’s flesh. 

Kaneki was trapped, he needed to get out, he had to get away, he was in so much pain. 

Rize growled angrily as Kaneki struggled to break free, loudly screaming as he felt her ripping at his arm, the skin tearing under her razor fangs.

And then suddenly something ticked in Kaneki and he felt a rush of adrenaline – managing to push her away, the black wolf stumbling. 

“I knew you couldn’t pretend forever, Kaneki-kun,” Rize smirked. “You’re confusing, but I’m always right.” She circled around him as he tried to get himself to his feet again, and instead just wobbled and tumbled forward, as Rize’s laughter echoed in the background.

Kaneki’s head pounded and his movements sent searing pain from the wounds on his arm and leg, but he still tried to sit up and growl back at Rize. For some reason, the world seemed sharper, his senses more in-tune, his body filled with the sudden adrenaline rush. It mimicked how the world looked in dreams he’d had as a child, ones he’d thought he’d forgotten. 

Kaneki paused. Did he just growl at her? He glanced at the wound on his arm, only to yelp in surprise at what he saw. It was covered in a thick white fur and ended in a sharp-clawed paw, the pale white colour only ruined by the blood running in rivulets from the wide gash. And that wasn’t all, as his face had become a snarling, toothy maw and his body the powerful, if not somewhat skinny, frame of a wolf. How? 

He was a wolf.

Kaneki wasn’t left with long to question what had happened, as Rize’s laughter echoed around him and the larger black wolf lunged at his face with fangs bared. Kaneki moved on instinct to avoid her and snapped around, his jaws clamping down sharply on her neck and she let out a pained noise. Her claws scratched at his chest and wounded arm and he let her go in surprise, and she turned to rush him again. Kaneki didn’t have coherent, fully-formed thoughts – he just knew he needed to fight, he needed to win. 

The sound of the two wolves’ scuffle echoed around the claustrophobic city as Kaneki and Rize traded blows. Try as he might, Kaneki could tell he was easily outmatched – he was smaller, less experienced, painfully wounded. But his instincts told him he couldn’t outrun her if he tried, he had to make a stand- 

The cracking sound of a gunshot echoed through the underpass, the air suddenly filled with the smell of gunpowder, and then the sound of the bullet embedding a brick wall behind them. Kaneki and Rize froze and turned to the source of the noise, an older man with straggly white hair and a white trenchcoat staring at them, a shotgun pointed in their direction. 

In two seconds, the older man focused his sights on Kaneki and pulled the trigger again. Kaneki realised what he was doing far too late and tried to leap out of the way, but didn’t move far enough and the bullet grazed his hindleg, opening a brilliantly painful gash and more scarlet blood coating his white fur. Kaneki let out a pained howl and fell to the ground, turning to Rize. The larger black wolf blinked back at him for a heartbeat and then the mysterious man with the shotgun, before leaping for the other side of the underpass and shelter. Kaneki heard her claws skittering away on the concrete and breathed heavily, glancing back at the man. 

The old man grunted and reloaded his shotgun in a matter of seconds, and then fired both rounds at the fleeing black wolf. Rize yelped in pain and surprise as both shots hit their mark, one on her back and one in the hindleg. She toppled over, wheezing painfully. Kaneki attempted to stand up and the old man immediately turned to him, reloading his weapon again. 

As Kaneki struggled to get to his paws, the door to bar nearby opened with a chime and a group of soldiers poured out, yelling at the old man to put his gun away and trying to pull it from him. The old man argued back, pointing at the two injured wolves, and struggled to get his shotgun barrel out of the soldiers’ grip. He was distracted. Kaneki had to move now. 

He hauled himself up, flinching at the crunching sound as he put weight on the paw Rize had mauled, and tried to break into a run. 

“Let me go, they’ll get away!” Kaneki heard the voice of the white-haired old man struggling with the soldiers behind him but didn’t dare look back, hobbling as fast as he could around a corner. Where was he? He needed to get home. 

The city seemed somewhat strange in the colours of a wolf’s eyes, the scents more intense, everything larger than it had been before. Kaneki glanced behind him to where Rize lay on the ground. She blinked at him sadly – she was still alive? He’d seen the bullets hit her, the blood splattering. She probably wouldn’t last much longer. He forced himself to look away as she glared at him and ran. 

\--- 

“Phone call for Mado-sensei,” one of the interns called out from his desk. Akira looked up lazily, taking the phone from the young man. 

“Thank you, Nishi – Nishiyama?” She said, attempting to remember his name. They cycled through interns far too quickly for her to memorise all their names, and this one was fairly new anyways. He was still studying, so he couldn’t really do anymore around the lab than answer phone calls. Practically useless in the work environment. "21st Laboratory’s Doctor Akira Mado speaking.” She said into the phone. 

“Good afternoon, ma’am.” Said a familiar voice, over-emphasising the formality. “Haven’t I called you enough at work for you to recognise the number?” 

“An intern picked it up, Amon. What do you want?” She sighed into the receiver. He should have known better than to ring her at work. Wasn’t he supposed to be on-shift as well? 

“Just wanted to know that your dad has arrived in town,” Amon’s voice replied through the phone’s tinny speakers. “He’s at the police station now.” 

Akira massaged her temples, “What’s he done now?”

“Some soldiers at a bar saw him firing rounds at some dogs. He thinks they were wolves, of course. Had to bring him into custody for unlawfully discharging a weapon.” As Amon paused, Akira could almost hear him rolling his eyes on the other end of the phone. 

“Do you need me to come down and bail him?” she asked, glancing at the time on her computer screen – 3pm. She was meant to be here for several more hours yet.

“Oh, no need.” Replied Amon, “I let him off on a warning. Just don’t tell the supervisor he’s my father-in-law.” 

Akira paused for a second, “You said he was shooting wolves?” 

“That’s what he says. I’m doubtful of that, but it is a hell of a dog at least. Huge.” Amon seemed to shuffle on the other end of the phone. “You know how your dad is.” 

Akira glanced behind her to the lab. “Did you hear where they took the wolf?” 

“The dog. And the soldiers took it, they’ve probably brought it to the Barracks downstairs. It was seriously wounded, though.” Akira could hear Amon’s voice sounding uncomfortable through the phone. Her father had always been a point of contention between the two of them, but she understood why he’d question him. She trusted her father’s instincts, however. 

“Alright. Take dad home after your shift, I’ll be home at the usual time.” She said quickly, moving to hang up the phone before she even heard Amon’s response. 

She turned around to see the intern Nishiyama behind her and jumped slightly. “I’m off shift now.” He said, shifting his glasses. 

“Oh, thank you Nishiyama-kun.” She said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“Just Nishio.” Replied the intern curtly, taking off his gloves as he headed towards the exit. 

Akira chose to ignore his tone and turned back to the main lab, greeted by the familiar site of a large, circular tank in the centre of the room, filled with a faintly glowing green liquid. Dozens of screens showing vital systems ran cables into the tank, attached to the small figure floating within the tank. 

Akira rushed over to the tank, “When did that happen?” she asked another assistant, pointing to the tank. 

Hinami, the Flower Maiden of the destroyed Ninteenth City, a pre-War alchemical wonder project that could no longer be replicated with today’s technology, a homunculus created entirely from flowers, had opened her eyes.


	2. younger brother / glasses

Ayato blinked and sat up, shaking off the last musings of a dream. It was Thursday evening, which meant the Lord’s supply train would be pulling into the town in a few hours. Time to get to work.

Supplies were scarce for the people who lived on the edges of the domed cities ruled by lords, and the Seventh City was no exception. Gangs formed in the slums from people who had no options, those who lost their jobs and homes in the city centre and those who’d been born into poverty and never given a choice.

Ayato had fallen into the gang when he was struggling to get food when he’d first struck out on his own. At first they were mad at him for stealing shit they planned to take and started a fight, but several humans are still barely a match for a wolf. The humans were easily impressed by his abilities despite his age and invited him to join them. When the last leader got shot on a raid, he was more-or-less crowned the new boss, although some of the older gang members would probably start something if Ayato said that outright.

He briefly looked out the empty window frame to the shape of the large dead tree below, the gang’s meeting point. Several members were sitting around already, shadowy outlines only vaguely illuminated by a few distant lights. Most of them lived in the same half-built housing unit Ayato slept in, the construction halted indefinitely and left open for squatters such as the gang. Many of the other buildings on the very edge of the dome had a similar story. As he stood up, his stomach growled. It’d been months since he’d gotten a proper meal.

Ayato tousled his dark hair and pulled on his jacket, rolling his sleeves up. The edge of his tattoo was visible under the sleeves and he tugged at them to make it less noticeable. The poorly-drawn rabbit emblazoned on his upper arm was supposed to be part of a sleeve of a wolf chasing its prey, but he’d put far too much faith in the shifty guy who’d offered to tattoo him and left before he could fuck up more of his arm. The wonky creature had gotten him the nickname of ‘Rabbit’, after he’d threatened to rip out the throat of the guy who’d first noticed it and called him ‘Bunny.’

“Kirishima, your sister’s here!” Called a voice from one of the floors below him, and Ayato rolled his eyes.

“Fuck off, Touka!” he shouted back downstairs, but he heard her stomping upwards regardless.

“I hope you’re not planning to hijack another train.” Touka said as she rounded the staircase, coming face to face with her brother. He smirked as he noticed she still hadn’t gotten any taller since the last time he’d saw her. They were supposedly twins, but really the only thing they had in common was their temper.

“So what if I am,” Ayato scoffed. “It’s not like the Nobles need another shipment of artisanal cheeses and marmalade. Some of us are starving.”

“You wouldn’t be starving if you didn’t insist on living in this shack.” Touka spat back. The argument had been ongoing ever since Ayato had first left, really since Dad had died. It didn’t seem like it’d ever truly conclude.

“Better than living in some human’s kennel.” growled Ayato, and he dropped his human guise suddenly. “Get off my territory,” he snarled at her as a wolf, a large grey beast with a black streak running from his head to his tail.

“Tch.” Touka pursed her lips but stood her ground, not flinching. “I just wanted to tell you I saw Rize yesterday. Watch out.”

Ayato bared his fangs at her and struck the ground with his paw impatiently. “I’m not twelve anymore, idiot. I could kick that bitch’s ass in my sleep.” He remembered the older black wolf’s laughter when they’d first met and how it’d made his blood boil. He was practically an adult now; he’d be on more than even terms with her now.

Touka rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you would.”

Ayato sat on the ground, yellow wolf eyes fixed on his sister. “Get off my territory. I don’t need a human’s pet hanging around here.”

Touka snarled and rushed at him, her human form disappearing and being replaced with a grey wolf, almost identical to Ayato other than the lighter colours on her nose and stomach. Her fangs bared down at his face. “If I’m a pet, then you must be one too. Look at all these humans who own you.”

Ayato didn’t respond, choosing to drag his claws across her face as she moved to bite him. They exchanged blows for a few seconds, but didn’t inflict any serious damage on one another. The argument had already been fought in the past, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t still some resentment.

And even if Ayato didn’t want to admit it, if they were to get in a serious fight, there was a chance he wouldn’t come out on top. The food that was provided to the students at the Lord’s School might have been tasteless slop, but Touka was still better-fed than Ayato was.

“I’m just using these humans. They’re _my_ pets.” Ayato said forcefully as he stood up and straightened his scarf in his human guise. Touka glared back as she cleaned the dust off her school uniform. She went to say something, but he brushed past her before she could, leaving her alone in the barely-furnished and half-constructed room that he called home.

He didn’t give a shit what she thought about him, he reassured himself. Living here would always be better than in the cramped and underfunded Lord’s School, surrounded by human sob stories and orphans. Out here he could be a real wolf, do whatever he wanted. If Touka wanted to stay in that shitty human den and pretend that she didn’t hate every minute she was stuck there, she could suffer on her own. It’s not like she could’ve stayed in the School forever anyway, she’d age out of the system in a few months when she turned 18 and be stuck without food anyways. Ayato was smart – he got out early and started making a name for himself already.

He heard Touka call him an asshole as he reached the floor below. Naki was sitting by the entrance to the stairwell, playing cards with those two massive idiots, Gagi and Guge. The three of them didn’t make any movement like they’d heard anything unusual above – like say, two wolves snarling at each other. Even if they did, Ayato would be surprised if they were smart enough to even question it. They were stupid and did what he said – exactly how he liked humans.

He reached the bottom floor of the housing complex and leapt over to the dead tree nearby with ease – a much wider jump than any human could have made. The gang members who were already waiting perked up at his arrival.

He cleared his throat. “Tonight, we attack from the south.”

\---

“What are you still doing here?”

Kaneki stirred at the sound of the voice and opened his eyes sleepily. Where was he? The last thing he remembered was … was Rize and the fight, the man with the gun, the wolves? He tried to sit up and looked at his paws – yep, still paws. He was still a wolf, which meant that it wasn’t all a strange dream. Or at least, if it was, he hadn’t woken up yet.

He looked around and realised that he was in a small, mesh cage inside a large, dark building. An IV drip ran from a machine nearby into his foreleg, the machine happily beeping away and casting an ominous green light into the room. And standing directly in front of the cage was a tall, slightly older man with chestnut-coloured hair, wearing a lab coat, glasses and a very disdainful expression.

“What? What … happened?” asked Kaneki slowly as he stood up. Human words felt foreign in a wolf’s mouth. Was he really speaking? Could the man even understand him?

The man rolled his eyes behind the glasses and crossed his arms. “I should ask you the same thing. I’m going about my day perfectly fine and then I hear that a wolf was shot and killed. Obviously, you didn’t die.”

Kaneki squinted at the tall figure. He could vaguely see an outline around him, the shape of a scrawny and slightly scarred wolf, the same colour as his hair. “You’re like her.” He said, backing up as much as he could in the tiny cage. “You’re a wolf.”

“No shit.” Replied the man wolf sarcastically.

“What do you want from me?” Kaneki panicked as the situation around him fully dawned – he was in a cage in a creepy building with a creepy wolf-man-thing like Rize staring down at him. “I’m just a normal guy. I’m not really a wolf, I swear. It all just happened, with Rize–”

“Tch. Of course it did.” The man glanced at Kaneki’s paw, where Rize’s strong jaws had clamped down and left it covered in blood. It was bandaged now, but the red colour still stained the white fur underneath the wrappings. How had he gotten here?

Kaneki’s thoughts flashed back to Rize and how she’d stared at him after she’d been shot, then how he’d turned tail and ran. And then how he’d felt really light-headed from losing all that blood, tripping over his feet. Vaguely he remembered hitting the ground. Oh. He must have passed out.

Kaneki’s recollection was suddenly cut short when the man kicked at the edge of the cage, making him jump. “Well? Are you planning to stay in there all day?” The wolf-man asked, looking down at him and muttering “Idiot,” under his breath.

Kaneki gulped, and examined the cage, a small mesh door at the front was held shut with a bolt, but otherwise unlocked. He glanced briefly at his paws – would he be able to shimmy it open with wolf’s claws? Maybe if he grabbed the edge with his teeth? He sniffed the latch and opened his mouth to try and pry it open with maybe his tongue, only to be interrupted again.

“What are you doing, idiot? You need hands for that. Human hands.” The annoyed wolf-man pinched the brow of his nose, the light of the machines around them reflecting off his glasses as he bumped them. “What is it, your first day in the city?”

Kaneki stopped and looked up awkwardly. “I don’t – how do I turn back into a human?” he asked cautiously.

“What do you mean how do I – Have you even tried?” the wolf-man gave Kaneki an incredulous look.

“Uh,” Kaneki paused, thinking. How did the wolves turn into humans? What had Rize done, she’d said something about the wolves bewitching humans? How could an animal cast a spell on a human? Is that what had happened to him, he'd been spelled by her into a wolf? He didn’t know what any of it meant, he just wanted to be a human again, not some stupid, oversized dog.

And then he wasn’t. Kaneki blinked in confusion and looked down at his hands – hands, not paws. He turned them over, making sure they were definitely human hands, and looked over himself – he was human again, exactly the same as he’d been his whole life, even wearing the same clothes he’d had during the failed ‘date’. He looked back to the wolf-man sheepishly and opened the cage latch with his newly returned opposable thumbs, and climbed out.

“Congratulations,” The wolf-man sneered as Kaneki tried to step out of the cage. “You’ll need to pull that out.” He said, pointing to the IV still attached to Kaneki’s arm.

Kaneki looked at his arm and winced, prodding the skin around the tube gently and retracting his arm quickly when it stung. The wolf-man huffed impatiently and bent over him, and then yanked it out of his arm in one swift motion, making Kaneki yelp in surprise.

“You have got to be the dumbest, shittiest wolf I’ve ever met.” The man muttered as he threw the IV drip away, glancing at the machine it was hooked up to as it began to read zeroes, and then back to Kaneki. “What’s wrong with your eye?”

“What?” Kaneki’s hand moved to touch around his eye socket and see if it was bruised, but it didn’t sting at all. He’d had many bruised eyes when he lived with his aunt, he knew that feeling too well.

The tall wolf-man leaned in close to Kaneki and adjusted his glasses, staring him straight in the eye. “You’ve still got a wolf’s eye, even as a human. Looks gross.”

Kaneki squinted at the small reflection of himself in the man’s glasses, and then jumped back in surprise. He was right – instead of the regular grey colour, his left eye was the same striking amber colour of a wolf’s, the same menacing colour of the wild animal Rize had become when she’d attacked. And it wasn’t just the eye itself, as the sclera around his eye had become a dark black, causing his wolfish eye to stand out even more.

“What? How did that happen?” Kaneki panicked, flapping his arms slightly and looking for another mirror so he could get a better look at it. “It wasn’t ever like that before, when did this happen?”'

The wolf-man shrugged and moved to the side of the cage, where a first-aid box lay open under the IV machine. He dug around in the box for a bit, tossing out some half-used supplies and then pulled out a medical eyepatch. He threw it over his shoulder to Kaneki, who struggled to catch it. “Cover that creepy shit up, you’ll scare the humans.”

Kaneki gulped and nodded anxiously, quickly placing the eyepatch over his strange eye and pulling the strings taut. “Thank you, er …”

“Nishio.” The wolf man grunted back, closing the first aid kit.

“Thank you, Nishio-sensei.” Kaneki replied, hoping he’d chosen the right honorific. The wolf-man was wearing a labcoat, and seemed to be tending to him.

“I’m not a doctor, yet.” Nishio replied dispassionately. “You should go now. That machine probably sent off an alarm when I yanked that out.” He pointed to the machine at his feet before he stood up again, towering over the shorter Kaneki. He couldn't help but feel intimidated, considering the tall man was also a wolf, but at least Nishio was being helpful unlike Rize.

“May I ask why you’re helping me?” Kaneki asked hesitantly, running his hand over the bandages on his arm, surprised they’d stayed in place now he was human again. “I mean, you bandaged me up and everything.”

“Didn’t do that, the soldiers did when they brough you in.” Nishio said curtly. “I just heard there was a wolf, and wanted to see what sort of idiot would let himself get captured.” He put his hands in his pockets, and then quickly turned towards the door. “Someone’s coming.”

“What?” Kaneki asked, turning around to face the large steel door at the end of the room. Was it more soldiers? The man with the gun?

It wasn't either, instead a middle-aged woman with bright blond hair appeared around the door instead, the light of the hallway behind her making Kaneki’s eyes water. He inhaled a large breath anxiously and turned to Nishio, who didn’t bat an eye.

“Nishio-san?” asked the woman. She was wearing a labcoat with the same embroidered patch on her breast as was on Nishio’s, although hers seemed much more worn than his was. “What are you doing here?”

“This member of the cleaning crew got hurt when I was passing by, so I was showing him where the first-aid supplies were, Mado-sensei.” Nishio responded quickly, pointing at Kaneki’s eye. “He hit his eye and we were trying to clean it up.”

Kaneki’s hand awkwardly reached behind his neck. “Yeah, that’s right.” He said quietly and unconvincingly, his eye suddenly fixed on the ground directly in front of him. He was dressed casually, not like a cleaner at all.

The woman – Mado, if Kaneki had heard right – looked behind them to the empty cage, confused. “What happened to the wolf? There was an alarm.”

Nishiki looked behind him in feigned surprise, and then back at Mado. “What? Aren’t wolves extinct? There wasn't any animals here when we arrived, was there?” he shoved Kaneki’s shoulder as he spoke, who quickly babbled his agreement.

The woman looked unconvinced for a second, looking from the empty cage, to Nishio and then to Kaneki, and then back to the cage, and then relaxed. “I see.” She said curtly. “You should get back to your cleaning crew.”

“I’ll be happy to take him.” Nishio flashed a fake grin and then grabbed Kaneki’s shoulders, pushing him towards the door. Kaneki glanced at the woman as they passed by her, her eyes on the cage behind them. Nishio shoved Kaneki into the hallway with a grunt, and then closed the door behind them, leaving Mado in the room alone.

“First rule of the city is stay a human – wolves stick out. Humans don’t give a shit about another human. Even the smart ones like her don’t pick up on the shit in front of them if you look like them.” Nishio grumbled, readjusting his glasses. “Don’t forget that, and don't get your ass landed back here again. I don't know how many stupid pups I can stand to rescue.”

Kaneki nodded quickly, before taking a breath to try and slow his racing heartbeat. That Mado lady had been intense, and something about her had seemed familiar in a way that put him on edge. “How do I get out of here?”

Nishio pointed down the hallway to their left. “That way, until you reach the elevator. You don’t need a keycard to go down, act like you know what you’re doing if you run into anyone else.”

Kaneki bowed deeply and suddenly, making Nishio jump back slightly. “My most humble of thanks for helping me so much, Nishio-san.”

“Stop making a scene.” The wolf-man replied, pushing Kaneki away. “Get out and go home.”

Kaneki stood upright again, his vision blurring with the quick movement. His wounds may have been bandaged and no-longer bleeding, but he was still painfully injured and his limbs ached.

As he rubbed his temples, an alarm suddenly blared above him and Kaneki moved his hands to protect his ears from the painful noise. A red light flashed in the ceiling, and he looked up at it in confusion. A door suddenly opened down the hallway to his left, and a number of armed men wearing the same bulky grey soldier’s uniform burst out and rushed down the hallway in the opposite direction.

“Tch.” Nishio’s lips pursed as he watched the soldiers move away.

“Wait, what is this place?” Kaneki asked in confusion.

“The Lord’s Southern Garrison. We’re being attacked.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nishio could be nice if he tried. i made ayato and touka twins because i wanted them to both be closer in age/closer to adults so they're like 17 and a half here


	3. on my own

Gunfire rang in Ayato’s ears and his scarf whipped in the merciless wind and snow as he struggled to hold onto the rail of the buggy. Naki screamed from the driver’s seat and turned the steering wheel sharply to the left, trying to avoid the shots careening towards them.

Everything about the raid had gone wrong. Somehow, the Garrison had known they were coming, and there had been extra soldiers protecting the southern train tracks outside the city before they’d even arrived. How had it happened? How had the plan gotten out in the mere hours since it’d been put into action?

Ayato looked behind them to try and make out what had happened to the rest of the group. Everyone in the advance squad, the ones that would have leapt onto the train from above when it’d passed through the first checkpoint, had been killed by the extra reinforcements. He could only see the lights of one other of their stolen buggies, which didn’t give him high hopes for everyone else.

“What do we do, Boss?” Naki yelled, craning his head towards Ayato as the dark-haired teen scanned the horizon. Outside the city, in the darkness and falling snow, even his wolf’s eyes couldn’t make out much of their surroundings. He pulled the scarf over his nose and growled back to Naki, “Shut up, I’m thinking!”

The lights of the second buggy trailing behind them grew brighter and Ayato squinted in their direction. Who had made it?

As the buggy drew closer, Ayato’s eyes widened. “Get down!” he snarled as the gunfire started again in their direction. Naki squirmed and glanced at the oncoming buggy, only to yelp as he realised it wasn’t their gangmates at all, but a squadron of soldiers. Ayato dove into the snow, trying to find cover behind their vehicle.

Nobody was left, he realised, the thought hitting him suddenly and chilling him until he felt just as cold inside as the snow outside. It was just him and Naki, and the enemy was closing in. Ayato had been outmatched, and now he’d been defeated. All it had taken was a few extra soldiers and the whole raid plan had crumbled. 

Naki dove into the snow next to Ayato, and looked at the teenager with terrified eyes. The reality of their situation seemed to be dawning on him as well. Even Naki could sense that they were toast.

Well, Naki was toast, at least. 

Ayato grit his teeth – he wasn’t going to go down like this, beaten by mere humans. The gunfire drew closer, only interrupted by Naki’s sudden shriek when Ayato unceremoniously dropped his human guise. The human beside him was shaking, curled up in a ball as Ayato turned to face him with a dark expression on his wolf’s face. “So long.”

And then Ayato ran, faster than any human could run, bounding across the snow towards the vague lights of his city home. The gunfire followed him briefly but then peeled off as the soldiers realised they were firing at an animal, not their human targets. The sounds of the fighting gradually grew fainter as Ayato put more distance between them.

He was going to live, goddamnit. Even if he was outmatched, outnumbered and on his own. He was going to live. 

\---

Hideyoshi Nagachika was a wolf who prided himself on knowing what was going on. While he didn’t consider himself much of a busybody, he did always make sure that he knew what was what, and who was who, as much as anyone could in the Seventh City.

His drive to be on top of the news was what had initially influenced him to pick Journalism as his major at the university, but he was starting to think that it may have been a mistake, considering how little wriggle-room the press really had underneath the Lord of the city. Doubly so, when he considered how much he’d already forked out in college fees.

Hide just had a rather strong fixation on finding out other peoples’ personal business, secrets, and mysteries, and he was fairly good at uncovering them, if he did say so himself. This had been both a boon and a hindrance for Hide in the past. In high school, he’d been crowned the class detective when he discovered who’d been stealing the class representative’s lunch tickets and figured out who tracked mud through the assembly call, and then chastised and punished by his teachers when he followed them during lunch breaks to figure out which staff members were dating, and subsequently unravelled Yamato-sensei’s affair. Oops. 

While those secrets had been fun to sniff out at the time, he’d never really found one that was as interesting as his own.

Not many of his classmates and friends seemed to also have the pressure of being the last of their kind, a hidden and supposedly extinct race, it seemed. Hide had never met another wolf since his parents, and if what they’d told him as a child was correct, he was the last full-blooded wolf on the continent, if not the world. That was, if he didn’t count those stuffed monstrosities at the Lord’s Keep, which he didn’t.

He really felt like he was barely a wolf, though. Hide spent almost all of his time in human form, acting as a human and doing human things, to the point where it wasn’t acting anymore. It was just what he did. It’d been that way since his parents died, really. Being a wolf wasn’t very suited to living in the city, and a human could do things like go to the store and buy groceries, go to school and take tests and get into university. Write a signature that signed him into years of student debt.

He supposed this was a fairly boring way to end his bloodline. The last of the wolves, spending his life sitting in a cramped room at 2am struggling to find the motivation to write another sentence on an essay that's due tomorrow and worth half his grade. Or being stuck mopping the floor of the police department’s second floor on a perfectly nice evening, like he was now.

When he’d first volunteered at the police station, he’d hoped that maybe he could actually get close to real life police work and mysteries and other things that would sate his curiosity. Unfortunately there were regulations about confidentiality and whatever, so the reality was more mundane. Hide got to do super exciting tasks such as shredding decades-old documents, mopping the three floors, and wiping down the desks after hours.

He kept at it though, because it would probably look good on his resume to be doing a lot of volunteer work, even if it was for the police. And sometimes the detectives would make small talk with him and talk about cases on their lunch breaks, which was the main reason he stayed.

He’d just finished mopping the second floor’s foyer when a door opened and an unfamiliar older man in a white trench coat similar to the detectives’ uniform, but not quite the same, walked in.

“AH!” Hide yelped loudly, pointing to his mop. “It’s wet! That’s still slippery! You can’t walk on it!”

“Oh?” the older man looked at his feet, and then back to Hide. “My apologies. Can I sit and wait here?” he pointed to the nearby bench and went to sit there without a response.

Hide studied the unfamiliar man – he had long, greasy-looking white hair and red dust staining the bottom of his pants and coat, and most alarmingly, what looked like a shotgun slung over his shoulder and resting on his back. The man removed it as he sat down, and placed the gun leaning against his leg. Hide gulped – maybe he shouldn’t try and argue about the state of the floors with someone with a whole ass shotgun.

“I don’t believe I’ve met you, sir,” Hide pushed his cleaning supplies to the side, realising he should probably try to be polite. “I’m Hideyoshi Nagachika, a volunteer here.”

“It’s nice to see someone so young volunteering at the police force,” the old man smiled, probably trying to be reassuring, but Hide couldn’t help but find it creepy for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “I’m Mado, a sheriff of a small town out near Eleventh City.”

A sheriff meant it must have been a really small town, since the whole sheriff/deputy thing didn’t exist in the larger cities, Hide thought. Guess that explained why the old guy could carry around a shotgun when he obviously wasn’t a soldier. “Near Eleventh City? That’s a pretty rough trip to make. What brings you to Seventh City?”

“I’m on a hunting expedition,” Mado replied evenly. He seemed normal enough, why did Hide find this guy so off-putting? “My daughter lives in this city, I came to visit her.”

“A daughter? How old is she, I might know her?” Hide said quickly, then realising that it probably sounded like he was weirdly interested in this random guy’s daughter. Whoops.

“I think she’s a bit out of your league, considering how young you are.” The sheriff chuckled, his hands resting on the shotgun barrel and putting Hide on edge, “Besides that, she’s engaged.”

Hide tried to laugh it off awkwardly. He should change the topic, what else had the guy mentioned? “You’re a hunter, though? I don’t think there’s much game around here, especially at this time of year.”

Mado smiled that creepy smile, “You’d be surprised. I’ve already shot two wolves in the city.”

“Wolves? In this city?” Hide exclaimed loudly, staring at the older man. “I mean, aren’t they extinct?”

“Oh, not at all, dear boy.” Mado moved a gloved hand under his chin, “This city seems to have somehow amassed a rather large feral population. Unfortunately, I only managed to take down one of them earlier. The soldiers took the other into custody before I could finish it off …” the old sheriff trailed off, studying Hide’s face and open mouth.

Hide hadn’t noticed however, lost in thought. Wolves in the city, how was that possible? Where were they? How had he never run into them? How many were there, where had they been hiding all this time? Did that mean he wasn’t the last one left? Why had this man shot them, had any survived? He glanced back to Mado, who still had his eyes fixated on Hide. Slowly, the old man’s hand gripped the shotgun tighter as if to pull it into firing position, and Hide’s eyes widened. Could the old man tell? Oh god, oh fuck, was he about to get shot??

There was a sudden noise and Hide brought his hands up to cover his face reflexively, but he quickly realised that it was just the foyer door opening next to Mado’s bench. Standing in the doorway were two familiar faces, and Hide tried to suppress his instinct to hide from the crazy man behind them, lower his hands and try his best to look casual.

Seidou Takizawa and Koutarou Amon, two of the younger detectives that Hide had somewhat befriended (Takizawa much more than the stoic Amon), looked at the pair with quizzical expressions.

Amon pushed his way past the shorter Takizawa and next to Mado, where he turned to face the old man, barely glancing at Hide. “I hope you’re not scaring the volunteers,” he said shortly, and Mado gave another light chuckle.

“Not at all,” he rose to his feet and slung the shotgun around his back again, making Hide finally let go of a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. “I assume we’re headed home now?”

Hide backed away from them as Amon shook his head, continuing his conversation with the old sheriff. “We’ve been called to attend the Southern Barracks, so Akira said to give you the keys and she’d meet you there.” The tall man fumbled with his pockets briefly, before handing the sheriff a keyring.

Hide inched closer to Takizawa, still standing in the doorway, who jumped slightly as he spoke. “What’s going on at the Barracks?”

Takizawa scratched at his chin, “I’m not supposed to say anything, but between you and me, apparently the Lord received a terrorism threat. I don’t think it’ll be much more than the regular gangs, though.” Takizawa let out a long sigh and turned away from Amon and Mado. “It’ll be the second time I have to go down to the South Barracks too, I already had to help the soldiers drag that massive dog the old man shot all the way to the labs. How come that isn’t regular soldier work, why rope in a detective when I could be doing plenty of other things? The old man says they were wolves, but – “

Takizawa babbled on but Hide’s thoughts were elsewhere. Terrorism? At the Barracks where the wolf also was? Wolf terrorism?? Well, Takizawa had somewhat answered one of his questions. He could find a wolf at the Barracks, at least, if the wolf was still there. Hide had to get there quick.

“Ah, I hope you get the overtime, then,” Hide said suddenly, and Takizawa stopped his mumbling and looked up. “I’ve gotta head home for the night. Thanks for all the hard work, detective!”

“Oh yeah, you too, Nagachika-san.” Takizawa replied casually, waving. Amon and the old man Mado looked to Hide briefly as he picked up his cleaning supplies.

Mado waved as well, with that creepy smile still plastered on his face, “I hope we see each other again soon, Hideyoshi Nagachika-kun.” 

Hide shuddered, he needed to get away from that old man like, yesterday. He got the absolute worst vibes from that guy, and that was before he’d tried to pull a gun on him.

It was darker than he expected when Hide finally left the police station – or at least, the darkness that meant that it was rather late at night, instead of the general darkness of the domed city. As he unlocked his bicycle from the stand it was resting at, he tried to remember the directions to the Southern Barracks. Well, guessing from the name, it was somewhere in the city’s south end. He’d figure it out as he went along.

As he peddled through the streets, he noticed a few of the regular advertising billboards instead had a notice in bright red colours and signed by the Lord flashing across them – a curfew for the night had been announced for half an hour ago, probably related to that terrorism threats. It didn’t seem to bother any of the people who were still milling the streets, however. No one really worried too much about the comparatively tiny and strategically unimportant Seventh City being attacked.

Hide pushed on, the intimidating shape of the Barracks slowly rising out of the shadows. You could always tell which buildings belonged to the Lord, because they were the tallest and the best maintained, standing out against the rest of the slowly deteriorating city. He dismounted his bike across the road from the barracks and looked out at the steady crowd entering the large concrete building – almost all soldiers in uniform, but also some of the white trench coats of detectives like Takizawa.

And then something strange caught his eye – a familiar mop of black hair in a messy bowl cut. It was Kaneki, walking down the front stairs of the Barracks and checking over his shoulder every few seconds. What was he doing here? And why was he wearing an eyepatch, and his forearm all bandaged up, what had happened to him? Why was he acting weirdly suspicious?

Hide ditched his bike and quickly scooted across the road between the military vehicles, calling out to his friend.

Kaneki didn’t seem to hear him at first, but eventually spotted Hide barrelling towards him from across the street and seemed to get spooked. After a few seconds of hesitation, Kaneki then took off in the opposite direction, what?

The hell was going on here? Kaneki hadn’t ever been athletic, like at all, ever since Hide had known him, but for some reason he was making a decent attempt to get away, even though he was limping. He dashed into an alley and Hide followed close on his heels.

He was so close, if Hide could just, yank at his shirt and pull Kaneki to a stop? Hide reached out his arm towards Kaneki, his fingers finding purchase on the bands of the eyepatch he was wearing. He could barely tug at it, but managed to dislodge it enough that the eyepatch flew off dramatically.

Kaneki looked over his shoulder in surprise, and Hide’s eyes widened when they locked onto Kaneki’s mismatched grey and wolfish yellow ones.

Well, that was certainly new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hide has adhd he told me himself


	4. in lockdown

Akira drummed her nails on the lab bench in front of her impatiently, and glanced towards the screen of her computer. It was unchanged and the same as it had been for the last ten minutes - blank except for a single message in red font: _Lockdown Protocols Engaged._

She had been only one left at the lab at this time of night, and was getting ready to finish up and head home to see her father for the first time in several years. But instead, there had been a lockdown placed on all of the Lord’s domains after a supposed terrorist threat, so Akira was left to sit and wait here alone until it was declared over. 

Well, she wasn’t truly alone. Akira glanced over her shoulder to the large glass tank sitting in the middle of the room. The Flower Maiden floated gracefully in the translucent fluid that filled the tank, her eyes fixed on Akira’s back. 

In the three years that she’d worked at this laboratory, Akira had never truly considered the Maiden a person - she was a science project, a reminder of the power that humans had wielded before the Greater War had forced them back to nothing, slowly trying to regain their former place. The Maiden looked the same as she had for all her three hundred years - the form of a young girl no older than 12, with short and choppy brown hair. She was dressed in a yellow tunic with long, flowing sleeves that ended just below the two identical, flower-shaped red markings on her forearms. On the back of her tunic, characters reading the name ‘Hinami’ were embroidered, which the research lab had taken to be a nickname given to her. They’d attempted to sequence as much of her DNA as their archaic equipment would allow, but they still had no clue as to how a flower - a Lunar Flower, a now-extinct species, to be precise - could be made into a human shape. 

They had so many questions when the Maiden had first arrived at the laboratory, ‘requisitioned’ from another cities’ Lord, but the Maiden herself didn’t give them many answers. The documents that had arrived with her implied that at one point before the Greater War, she could walk, talk and otherwise act like a human, but she had since fallen into a hibernation-like sleep. Akira and her team had hoped that by placing her in the tank, which would allow her to absorb nutrients directly, it could re-energise her and she might ‘wake up’, but this attempt had been futile. The only time that she’d shown any consciousness had been today when she’d opened her eyes for the first time, but none of their data showed any abnormalities in her system, so they had no clue what had triggered it. 

The Flower Maiden seemed intent on remaining a mystery as long as possible, despite how much Akira wanted to study the specifics of her design, and uncover how she functioned. The Maiden’s eyes followed Akira as she moved over to another desk and opened the drawers, hoping one of her coworkers had a secret stash of food that she might eat. She glanced back at the Maiden, whose wide, dark-pink eyes suddenly blinked. They’d only learnt that her eyes were pink today, but personally Akira felt the colour was closer to a red than it was to pink. They still weren’t sure if she could truly recognise and process what she was seeing. The way her eyes began to follow the lab workers was creepy, and Akira almost wished that her eyes would close again, so the Maiden wouldn’t look as much like a trapped young girl, and Akira’s mind could classify her back into the ‘thing’ category rather than the ‘somewhat human’ one. But that part of Akira was much smaller than the part that wanted to document and report all of the Maiden’s new changes. 

Score! One of the desks’ drawers had an old pack of corn chips tucked underneath some documents. Hopefully their owner would forgive Akira for taking them without asking. She opened the packet and began to eat the stale chips, only interrupted by a knocking on the laboratory door. Akira looked up as the door opened, but it didn’t reveal the soldiers she expected. 

Instead, it was Takizawa, a detective she knew worked with Amon, and that smug-looking intern, Nishio. But most importantly was what was in Nishio’s arms. 

“Maris Stella!” Akira called as she rushed over to the doorway, and scooped the fat, long-haired grey cat out of the intern’s arms. The cat purred happily as she scratched her under the chin, only to give Takizawa an dangerous glare as he moved over to Akira and reached out his hand to pet her. Maris Stella may have been the entire lab’s cat, but she only seemed to like Akira.

“Takizawa, I hope you’re here to tell me the lockdown is being lifted.” Akira said as she walked over to her desk and placed Maris Stella on top. The feline gave her a pleading expression with her big round eyes, and Akira opened the top draw and passed the cat a few fish-shaped treats. 

“Uh, no, sorry, Doctor.” Takizawa replied, “I was just told to accompany this one up to the labs.” he pointed with his thumb to Nishio, who was wearing casual clothes and not the required lab coat Akira had always seen him in. 

“Didn’t you finish hours ago? What are you still doing here?” she asked the intern, and he adjusted his glasses. 

“Been helping that cleaner kid,” he replied nonchalantly. “Then when I got to the log machine, it was broken, so I had to wait for IT to come and fix it for me. And after that, I was told there was a lockdown and I had to go back to the lab.” he shrugged his shoulders. “Trust me, I would much rather be back home with my girlfriend than stuck here still.” 

“Well, I’m glad you found Maris Stella, at least.” Akira gave a small smile as the cat meowed at her for another treat, and looked over to Takizawa. “Do you know when this lockdown will be over?” 

“Unclear, sorry.” Takizawa said apologetically, his hands in his pockets. “Apparently there’s been a disturbance at The Lord’s Keep, so it might be hours before they clear it over there.” 

Akira let out a loud sigh. She hoped her father had made it to her apartment fine, at least. “Amon isn’t with you?” 

Takizawa frowned, “No, we got split up when we arrived at the Barracks. He got called to deal with one of those raiding gangs”

“Must be why he’s not responding to his pager,” Akira tapped her long fingernails on the desk impatiently again out of habit. “Are you sure you can’t ask your boss or something if you could escort me home, considering I’m not military? I haven’t seen my father in several years -” 

Akira cut herself off as all the lights in the lab suddenly shut off, leaving only the dim glow of bioluminescent fluid of the Flower Maiden’s tank to illuminate the room. Behind the vague silhouette of Nishio in the door, the lights in the hallway also seem to have been cut off. She slowly counted to twenty in her head - the normal amount of time it would take for the backup generators to kick in, but when she reached twenty the lights didn’t return. 

“Akir- Mado-sensei, are you alright?” Takizawa’s voice called out in a panicking tone. 

“I’m fine, it’s just lights.” She responded quickly, and guided herself around her desk and over towards the Flower Maiden’s tank. She didn’t seem to show any changes that Akira could make out in the dark, and even if her tank wasn’t cycling, she should be fine for a few hours, at least. Hopefully, they would have restored the power by then. 

“I thought the Barracks had a backup generator?” asked Nishio’s voice, making his way over towards the faint glowing of the tank. The green light reflected off his glasses eerily, but at least Akira could see him, unlike Takizawa. 

“It does,” replied Akira, her eyes still on the tank in front of her. “Takizawa, can’t you go find out what’s wrong?” 

“Er, I don’t think the elevators are working right now. And the stairs could be dangerous if there’s no lights, so -” Takizawa started, only to be distracted by what seemed to be a light coming in their direction from down the hallway. “Oh, is that you, Captain? Are you soldiers?” Takizawa called out towards the light as the sound of footsteps drew closer. 

There was a slight commotion on Akira’s desk as Maris Stella hissed at something in the dark, before leaping off and running towards one of the dark corners of the room where Akira couldn’t make her out anymore. 

There was a clunking noise downstairs and the laboratory’s lights flickered back on, and Akira jumped as she realised that there was an unfamiliar figure standing at the door. It was a woman, she believed, wearing an intricately-detailed maroon and golden dress and a massive cloak that trailed behind them and seemed to be made from dozens and dozens of feathers, from birds that Akira had never seen. Her head was covered by the cloak’s hood, which she removed as she stepped into the room, long green hair falling to her shoulders, ornamented with pauldrons in the shape of owl’s heads. The mystery woman was a Noble. She had to be, no one else could afford clothes like those. And she seemed dangerous. 

The woman grinned and rushed over to the tank Akira stood in front of, and a duo of soldiers wearing owl-shaped masks to cover their faces followed her. Why was a Noble here, what was going on? Who was this woman? 

“Hinami-chan!” the Noble called as she approached the glass, barely glancing at the room’s other occupants. She examined the tank’s glass quickly and drew back her hand to punch it.

“No, don’t!” Akira called and reached out her hand in vain to protect her lab as the Noble woman’s fist connected with the glass, her spiked gauntlet piercing a hole cleanly through the tank. Green, glowing liquid bubbled and began to leak outwards. The Flower Maiden’s eyes finally shifted from Akira to the Noble in front of her, as the green-haired woman wound up to strike the glass again. Her second strike was much more effective, creating a massive crack along the length of the tank. 

Akira moved to defend the Maiden somehow, but she was pushed back by the Noble’s guards, and then the liquid of the Maiden’s tank as the glass splintered and collapsed, the contents beginning to rush out. The fluid pooled around the Noble woman’s feet, and she caught the Flower Maiden as she fell from the empty tank, her head landing on the woman’s shoulder. 

“Get back, Mado!” Nishio called to Akira, and suddenly the Noble woman’s head shot up and looked towards the intern standing with Takizawa behind the desks. 

“I didn’t realise that they kept pets in the labs.” the woman smirked, and Akira saw Nishio’s face grow dark, but he didn’t move. Takizawa attempted to put himself between the intern and the Noble defensively, but Akira could see he was shaking. “Unfortunately, the Lunar Maiden can’t lead you while she’s asleep.” 

The Noble kicked away some of the glass at her feet and placed the Flower Maiden on the ground in front of her. She quickly produced from within her heavy cloak a syringe filled with a liquid Akira couldn’t identify from this distance, and unceremoniously injected it into the Maiden’s shoulder through her clothes. 

The effect was immediate, as the once-lifeless and doll-like Maiden suddenly began to shudder, and then blinked in surprise, her eyes finally seeming to really take in her surroundings. She wobbled into a sitting position, and then attempted to stand up and look around. The Noble’s smile grew as she watched the Maiden, and with no warning she grabbed the collar of the Maiden’s clothes, lifting her into the air in front of her. 

The Flower Maiden’s red eyes suddenly grew wide and her mouth opened, letting out a pained, shrieking noise that echoed around the laboratory. The noise was harrowing, resembling the scream of a young girl in pain but somehow distorted in a way Akira couldn’t quite describe, and rang in her eyes. In the corner of her eye, Akira saw Nishio move to cover his ears in pain, and the Noble woman dropped the Maiden in surprise, growling and covering her own ears. She turned to her guards and ordered them to carry the Maiden, who they scooped into their arms, covering the Maiden’s mouth.

The sound of the Maiden’s scream seemed to chill Akira in a way she couldn’t fully grasp - as distorted as it had been, the shriek was that of a little girl in pain. And as much as Akira had spent the last three years not seeing the Maiden as a girl, the scream had felt so painfully helpless and human that Akira almost felt guilty for not seeing the struggling young flower girl as at least somewhat like her. 

The Noble woman shook her head at the Maiden and flipped her hair over her shoulder, the long green locks falling gently around her as she turned towards Akira. “You’re a scientist here, correct?”

Akira was stunned, and blinked at the Noble woman as she realised that she was being spoken to directly. “Y-yes, I am.” 

“Good,” the woman replied, and reached for the embossed belt around her waist. There was the noise of metal unsheathing and Akira found herself at the dangerous end of a rapier, it’s elaborate, bird-cage styled handle held by the gloved hand of the Noble woman. “Come, I need someone to monitor her.” 

She wanted Akira to monitor the Maiden? She glanced at the flower girl struggling in the hands of the Noble’s guards, and realised she had some sort of feelings to protect her. If it was as a scientist protecting her work, or as an adult who had seen a child in pain, she didn’t know. Akira’s hands shakily raised into the air beside her and she nodded in agreement, only for Nishio to suddenly dash in between them and stare at the Noble woman. “I’m a scientist too, take me.” 

The Noble woman raised her eyebrow at Nishio, but didn’t move her rapier. “Both of you, then. Hurry up, I have a schedule to keep to.” 

Nishio turned back to Akira, and she looked back at him with a confused expression. He was just an intern, why was he willing to get abducted by an unfamiliar Noble for the Flower Maiden? Did he feel he had to protect this strange, alchemical-wonder child as well? She considered arguing and telling him to back away, but one of the guards placed a heavy hand on her shoulder and pushed her towards the door. Nishio bumped into her as he was shoved in the same direction, and muttered an apology. 

Akira turned towards Takizawa and saw the detective trembling, his mouth open in horror. His hands darted towards his belt, and he shakily pulled a pistol from its holster, and pointed it at the Noble.

The woman laughed as Takizawa’s expression grew desperate, and Akira could see the gun barrel wobbling as the detective tried to aim it at the green-haired woman. The Noble strode towards him, and then closer still, until the gun was pointing directly at her chest, the barrel resting against her. Takizawa couldn’t pull the trigger. Akira had known him long enough that she knew it wouldn’t happen, and the Noble could tell as well. And even if Takizawa did, there was no doubt that the armour she wore would be enough to protect her. 

The Noble sheathed her rapier and reached for the gun resting against her chest, and yanked it free from Takizawa’s shuddering hands. His reaction was delayed, only jumping in surprise after the woman had pulled free the pistol’s magazine and dropped it and the now unloaded weapon to her feet. “Stay out of this, Detective.” she grinned and pushed him to his knees, and made her way to the door. 

The guard who wasn’t carrying the Flower Maiden grabbed Akira’s wrists and pulled them behind her, and with a clicking noise she realised she was handcuffed. She blinked, the situation seemingly finally dawning on her. Where was she going to be taken, what did the Noble want with the Flower Maiden? She looked over to the already-cuffed Nishio standing behind, finally finding her voice, and asked. “Why did you do that? Ask to be taken?” 

Nishio didn’t respond, instead his eyes fixed on the form of the Flower Maiden in the arms of the other guard. The girl was attempting to escape, attempting to free her mouth and kicking her legs at her captor. But her movements were slow and sluggish, and the guard didn’t flinch as he followed the green-haired Noble woman out of the lab. The other guard pushed Akira forward and she glanced one last time at the quivering Takizawa, who was still on the ground, his coat stained in the green fluids of the smashed tank. He didn’t catch Akira’s gaze, instead staring at the tiled floor of the lab. 

Akira took a deep breath and followed Nishio out of the laboratory before the guard could push her forward again. 

_Sorry, Dad. Don’t think I’ll be able to make dinner tonight._


	5. friend / cry for help

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> normally when i write i include honorifics like -san and -chan in spoken dialogue, and i sorta messed it up while writing the last few chapters, but i'm gonna go back to my normal writing style starting this chapter. will be updating the previous chapters to reflect this!

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

Kaneki had made it outside the Southern Barracks after leaving Nishio, even though there were soldiers suddenly swarming the place. He’d only just stepped out of the oversized entryway when he’d heard a familiar voice calling his name, and spotted Hide’s blond hair and bright green jacket in the crowd. And then he panicked.

Hide had a bad habit of getting up in people’s business, whether they wanted him there or not. That had really been how the two of them had become friends in school, if Kaneki was honest. 

After Hide first transferred to his middle school, he’d become popular with the other kids and earned a reputation as class clown, but got fixated on Kaneki when he saw him sitting alone all the time.

Kaneki had never really been that good with other people, and was rather emotionally closed off after his mother’s recent passing, but Hide had insisted on sitting at his side and trying to talk to him every day until Kaneki had finally opened up to the other boy. 

That kind of childish insistence on getting through to Kaneki had been a lifesaver for him as a child, but it was exactly the opposite of what he wanted right now.

Kaneki hadn’t even really considered what he was going to tell people about his eye – he didn’t even know what was wrong with his eye, for that matter. It didn’t really seem like something that he could ask about at the apothecary. 

What was even going to happen to him? Was he going to suddenly start craving raw meat and doggy treats? Was he cursed by Rize and going to turn into a werewolf at the full moon? Was he going to start growing extra body hair and begin attacking people???

There was a lot going on in Kaneki’s head right now, and ideally, none of it would involve Hide prying in until Kaneki had figured out what exactly was going on and how to fix it. But what if Kaneki didn’t figure out what was going on? What if he couldn’t fix it? Would he have to run away and live in a shack alone so nobody would find him? Why hadn’t he asked Nishio any of these questions? Well, he had been somewhat distracted by the whole being attacked, and in a cage, and a wolf, but still, he should have thought maybe thirty seconds ahead!

Hide’s voice echoed over the crowd of soldiers amassing at the front of the Barracks and helped bring Kaneki out of his thoughts. He looked briefly at Hide, running across the road to get to his side and decided that perhaps the best thing to do would be to avoid this entire situation and just get as far away from Hide as he could.

And so Kaneki ran.

Kaneki’s frail physique as a child had never endeared him to athletics and running, but for some reason, even though he was injured, he could run much faster than he ever had before. Was that because of the wolf thing? God, was everything a wolf thing now?

He looked over his shoulders to find Hide hot on his trail – he should have expected this, really, but what else could Kaneki do? He dashed around a corner and found himself in a dark alleyway. If he could just lose Hide –

And then he felt something being yanked and the medical eyepatch Nishio had given him flew off, caught in Hide’s outstretched fingers. Kaneki looked around in shock, his eyes meeting Hide’s and spotting the confusion on the other boy’s face.

Shit shit shit!

Kaneki quickly moved his hand to cover his right eye – wait, was he sure that was the right eye? Which eye was it again? He tried to cover both and realised that wouldn’t erase what Hide had already seen, the eye that looked like it belonged to a wild animal. The wolf’s eye.

And then Kaneki felt his centre of gravity change and almost toppled over in his panic, only to look down and realise that he wasn’t standing on his feet anymore, he was back to standing on paws.

SHIT SHIT SHIT.

Kaneki yelped and stumbled backwards on his clumsy paws, shaking as he looked up at Hide. Why had it happened again? And why had it happened now, when he was specifically trying to avoid doing anything wolf-related? Hide hadn’t moved, and just gave Kaneki a quizzical look. Was he so surprised that he couldn’t move?

Panicking, Kaneki glanced around the alleyway for somewhere to run, get away from Hide. The first thing his eyes saw was a discarded sheet of tin leaning against one of the defunct store windows, and he floundered over to it and dove underneath, curling into as small a shape he possibly could and covering his eyes with his paws.

He hadn’t even lasted five minutes outside those Barracks, what was going to happen now? Were soldiers going to bust through the windows of the abandoned storefronts and drag him back to the cage? Would they poke more needles in him and conduct crazy experiments and then stuff him and put him on display at the Lord’s House when they were done with him? Or would they tour him around the cities as a sideshow attraction, the cursed wolf boy?

“Uh, Kaneki?” Hide’s voice called out from nearby, making Kaneki jump.

“Go away Hide!” Kaneki yelled back, “I’m a … I’m a dangerous werewolf, I could hurt you!” he wasn’t sure if his shaky words were supposed to be a warning or a threat. They didn’t really sound like either.

“Kaneki,” Hide’s voice replied, closer to his hiding spot this time, his footsteps drawing closer. God, he was right next to him. “Dude, I dunno how to break this to you.”

“Go away Hide! I mean it!” Kaneki yelped, only to shudder as the tin sheet that made his poor hideaway moved next to him and fell to the ground.

“Kaneki,” Hide repeated, and Kaneki glanced a look in his direction, half expecting him to be surrounded by soldiers with nets and guns. But he wasn’t, and he wasn’t looking like the cheery, energetic boy with poorly-done bleach blond hair that Kaneki was used to.

It was a wolf. Another. Wolf.

Hide was a wolf? The wolf looked at Kaneki calmly and he looked back, the darker brown fur matching what Hide’s had looked like before the bleaching, the headphones around his neck the same brand that Hide was always wearing and forcing Kaneki to listen to some obscure song he’d found with. 

“Wh – what’s going on here?” Kaneki eventually asked. How many wolves were there in this city?

He blinked and the brown wolf was replaced by the more familiar shape of his friend, who was putting his hands in his pockets and giving Kaneki a clueless look. “You’re asking _me_ that? I should be asking you! How come you didn’t tell me you were a wolf?” Hide ran a hand through his hair and then looked back to Kaneki.

“I’m not a wolf!” Kaneki barked back, but the rebuttal seemed somewhat weakened by the fact that he was, indeed, a wolf. “At least, I wasn’t! I got cursed by Rize, she turned me into one.” 

“Wait, what? Rize-chan, that girl you were on a date with?” Hide asked, cocking his head. “How did she turn you into a wolf? I didn’t know it worked like that.” 

“I don’t know how it works! She just, turned into a wolf and she bewitched me or whatever and now I’m a wolf!” Kaneki sucked in a deep breath. He needed to stop being a wolf and go back to being a human, how did he do it last time? Just think hard about being a human? 

He tried to picture his human reflection as he’d seen it in the morning, with the two regular human eyes, and when Kaneki opened his eyes again he’d turned back. Judging from the fact that Hide’s gaze immediately focused on one of his eyes, the wolf’s eye was still there, unfortunately. 

Was Kaneki going to have to live like this forever? If he even thought about wolves for too long he’d end up a stupid dog? He quickly thought about being human, worried that if he even considered the possibility of turning into a wolf again it would happen. “Why didn’t you tell me _you_ were a werewolf?” he looked at Hide accusingly. 

“I’m not a _were_ wolf. I’m just a regular old wolf, always have been, never got ‘bewitched’.” Hide replied, shaking his head. “And I don’t tell people because that’s like, a personal question, y’know? My parents said I was the last wolf, and to never tell anyone. Also, apparently there’s a lunatic going around shooting wolves, so I’d say that’s a fairly valid reason as well.” 

Kaneki gulped, “Yeah, I met him,” and indicated to his bandaged leg, where the skin had been sliced open when the bullet had scraped past him, and Hide’s mouth opened. 

“Dude, you got shot?” He rushed over to Kaneki’s side and poked at the bandages, and Kaneki jumped back in surprise. 

“Hey, that hurts!” Kaneki shook his head, and sat down on the cold concrete, moving his bandaged leg away from Hide. “So you’ve actually been a werewolf this whole time? How can you be the last one if Rize was a wolf too?” 

“Just _wolf_ , no _were_.” Hide chastised again, and sat down next to Kaneki casually, who shifted away slightly. If Hide noticed, he didn’t say anything. “I don’t do the whole changing under the full moon thing. Although you might, if this Rize-san cursed you. How did it happen?” 

Kaneki drew his legs close to his chest and looked to the patch of ground in front of him. “I don’t know, she was just suddenly a wolf, and she bit me, then I was a wolf too, and then there was a fight, and then the man with the gun showed up.” he mumbled without making eye contact with Hide. “But how could you be a wolf the whole time? I’ve known you since, since we were kids!” 

Hide scratched his head, “I just look like a human all the time, so everyone thinks that I’m just a regular guy. I thought you caught me a bunch of times when we were smaller though, don’t you remember how you always said I smelled like a wet dog? And that time you went to my dorm in eight grade and I wasn’t there, but there was a puppy, and then it disappeared after you left and I pretended I had no idea what you were talking about?” 

Kaneki thought about Hide’s words, a few memories surfacing from when they were younger. Sure, he’d seen a brown dog that could have been an adolescent wolf hanging around school a few times, but he’d just assumed it was one of the dozens of strays hanging around the city. He’d mostly been too caught up in his own world, with thoughts about his mother and homelife, to even consider that there might have been something strange about Hide, when he’d always been the weird one. “I didn’t know that it was even possible that someone could actually be a wolf.” 

Hide seemed to have a sheepish look, and ran his hand through his fringe again. “Well, at least I know I’m not the last wolf.” he went to put his hand on Kaneki’s shoulder, but the black-haired teen shied away from him. “I’m not gonna hurt you, man.” Hide said, facing directly towards Kaneki. 

Kaneki looked back and saw the concerned look on Hide’s face. He’d known Hide almost all his life, and he’d been his best friend that entire time. He’d never turned into a wolf and attacked Kaneki, or even hurt him as a human. He supposed he was just still on edge from Rize’s attack, and the chasing, and the whole wolf thing in general. He relaxed a little, and let Hide place his hand on his shoulder. Even if it wasn’t much, it still felt a little comforting. He let his body lean against the taller boy’s shoulder.

“What do I do, Hide?” Kaneki finally said, turning to look at Hide with his mismatched eyes. “About these eyes, about this whole suddenly turning into a wolf thing. What do you do?” 

Hide frowned, and glanced back at Kaneki. “I don’t know, man. I’ve been just a normal human for so long that I barely know how to be a wolf trying to be human anymore. Tonight was the first time I was a wolf again for months - maybe even years.” Hide shifted slightly and Kaneki sat up straight again. Hide reached for something on the ground nearby them and passed it to Kaneki, and he realised that he was returning the eyepatch that had been torn away earlier. “I can recommend you should probably put that back on your eye, though.” 

Kaneki gave a weak smile and took the eyepatch from Hide, fastening it around his head again. “It’s on the proper eye, isn’t it?” he asked and Hide nodded with a bright grin. Even though the eyepatch blocked out half his eyesight, he still felt like he could sense everything around him as well as ever, if not better. 

“We should probably get home then, instead of sitting in the street.” Kaneki mumbled, and Hide stood up enthusiastically. 

“My apartment’s closer, you can stay the night.” he smiled at Kaneki who stumbled to his feet, and then nodded. Hide quickly retrieved his bike from where he’d ditched it outside the Southern Barracks - there were still soldiers swarming outside the building, and Kaneki did not want to hang around the area. 

They reached the apartment complex Hide lived at not long after, and Kaneki was welcomed into the small two-room flat graciously. He realised he’d never been to Hide’s new place since they’d started university, as they would just meet up on campus or at one of the small, cheap cafes nearby after classes. There was minimal furniture, a ratty couch, a beat-up television with a wonky aerial, a small desk piled high with papers and a few shelves lined with some manga and CDs in the corner, but the small apartment felt lived-in in a way Kaneki’s own sterile living space didn’t.

After a brief discussion about who would sleep on the couch and who would take Hide’s futon, Kaneki turned out the lights and sat down on the futon. For some reason, he felt his human form slip and he instead curled up on the blankets as a wolf comfortably. There was movement from the couch and Kaneki glanced up to see Hide’s wolf form padding towards him and then flopping down onto the futon next to him. Kaneki moved closer to Hide’s warm fur and rested against the other wolf, finally feeling safe for the first time since meeting Rize. 

When he closed his eyes, sleep came quickly. 

\---

Kaneki’s dream was the same as it had been since he was a child - a single white wolf running through the dark wilderness, following a trail of pale white flowers illuminated by a bright full moon. Except, he realised that he was the wolf now, not just watching it. Why was he following the flowers? Something about them seemed warm and familiar, their sweet scent nostalgic to him. 

And then the dream changed. 

There was a shrieking noise that rang loudly around him and Kaneki tried his best to cover his ears. The scream was a cry for help, but mangled in some way that made it feel unnatural. And then there was a vision of a dark laboratory, of a woman with green hair and an ornate, feathered coat, figures in white and others in masks, and at the centre, a young girl dressed in yellow screaming the scream that echoed on and on, begging for someone to help her. 

Kaneki locked his eyes on her and smelt that same nostalgic scent of the flowers in his dreams. A name came to his head - Hinami. And then it was gone. 

\---

Across the city, in a dorm much like the one that Hide had grown up in, a young girl stood on the balcony and looked out at the darkened city. Touka glanced up in surprise as an unfamiliar, piercing noise sounded and reverberated around the buildings for a few seconds, and then cut out as quickly as it had started. 

“Whatcha doing?” called a voice, and Touka turned around to see Yoriko sitting up in her bunk, looking at the other girl in confusion. 

“Did that noise wake you up? What do you think it was?” Touka asked, turning away from the balcony and walking back into the small dormitory room. 

“What noise?” Yoriko asked sleepily, wiping at her eyes, “I woke up when I heard you open the sliding door, but that’s all I could hear.” 

Touka closed the sliding door behind her and locked it. “Must be nothing, then.” 

\---

Outside the city, a young, dark grey wolf searched for shelter from the snow in the tiny outpost outside the dome. Ayato breathed heavily, his paws aching from running the distance he’d put between himself and the soldiers. He was glad for his long pelt to keep him warm in this weather, at least. 

He looked up suddenly as a strange, distant noise resonated in the domed city behind him, strangely familiar. Unsure what it was, but curious, Ayato leapt onto the top of a nearby roof, and howled back an answer.


	6. some feelings / forth wolf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning: graphic description of a corpse, there is an asterisk (*) at the start and the end of this paragraph if you would like to skip it

“Missing?” The Mado sheriff’s gloved hand slammed into the table as he swore loudly, but Amon didn’t flinch at the noise. “How can she have gone missing in a lockdown?” 

Amon glanced across the room to where Detective Takizawa was sleeping at his desk. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.” he said, barely stifling a yawn. Despite his concern for Akira’s safety, he was struggling to stay awake himself, as the two detectives had been on-shift since 10am the previous morning. “Takizawa was the only one we saw on the cameras entering and exiting the room during the lockdown period, and he obviously hasn’t taken her.” 

Mado’s squinting gaze turned to the sleeping detective, and hobbled over to the adjoining desk and roughly shook him awake. Takizawa’s head snapped up and he held his hands up in surrender, trying to babble an apology for sleeping on the job. 

“He doesn’t know anything,” Amon cut in as Mado glared at the young detective, “All he remembers is the lights going out, and when they were back there wasn’t anyone left in the laboratory but him. It’s in the report I gave you.” He gestured to the papers he’d passed to Mado when he’d first walked into the office, sitting unopened on his desk. Mado had no jurisdiction as an officer of the law in Seventh City, but Amon had figured it was allowed as the case concerned his daughter. 

Mado glanced at the thin pages of Amon’s report and scooped them into his hand, before fiddling with his coat pocket and producing a pair of reading glasses in a beaten-up case. He was skimming through the case file when there was a knock at the office door, which was opened by one of the receptionists Amon recognised but didn’t know by name. 

“Excuse me, detectives,” she said as she walked into the room, followed by a young woman with brown hair and choppy, uneven bangs. “This is Kimi Nishino-san, she’s here in regards to the current missing persons’ case?” 

The young woman - Nishino - bowed politely, “I was asked to give a statement about my boyfriend, Nishiki Nishio?” 

Mado arched an eyebrow at the woman and looked back to Amon, “What was the relation between Akira and the other missing person?” 

“Coworkers,” Amon replied, “Takizawa, can you take Nishiyo- Nishino-san’s statement?” There were too many Nishi-somethings for his tired brain to keep up with. 

Takizawa stood up quickly and saluted in Amon’s direction - “Yes, sir!” - before leading the young woman into the recording room. Amon rolled his eyes at Takizawa’s sudden enthusiasm, but he supposed he must have been feeling guilty with Akira disappearing on his watch. He’d always seemed to admire the doctor, ever since he’d met her through Amon a few years previous. Amon hoped that those feelings might help drive Takizawa to do his best on the case. 

And Amon truly needed everyone doing the absolute best they could on the case. It had only been a few hours since she’d vanished, but their search efforts of the crime scene had resulted in no leads at all. There was no indication where she’d gone, why she was gone, nothing. There was believed to have been a scuffle due to the damage in the laboratory, but that was their only clue. The power outage at the Barracks aligned with the disappearances perfectly, knocking out any cameras and computer logs that would have been running, although the computers would have been frozen during the lockdown and useless regardless. Akira Mado - and Nishio, and the Flower Maiden they studied - had vanished, and Amon felt lost. 

He’d grown so accustomed to having her by his side, talking about her research and then offering her own guesses about Amon’s work, offering support and dinner when he finished work late, laughing at his pitiful attempts to make jokes. One reason he hadn’t left for home was because he’d have to confront the apartment empty without her. To think that she was gone, without a trace, just couldn’t fully sink in for Amon. 

He went through the motions of writing the missing person’s report, investigating her last known location like he would with any other case, but it barely registered to him that the name he was writing on the documents, evidence bags, logging in the computer system, was the same name as the person who truly meant the most to him in the world. 

Amon didn’t know how to react to it all, truly. His boss had offered to take him off the case but Amon had insisted that he could process it as normal, and he had, so far. He’d been stiff and stoic as always through the entire process, and he didn’t truly know why he hadn’t reacted at all. When Mado had arrived, he’d been mad and upset, threatening Amon and Takizawa both, and Amon felt almost like he was a fraud for not having a similarly big, emotional response. Was he just emotionally broken from too many years of this job to truly show how he was feeling - or even to fully recognise these feelings at all?

Amon was brought out of his thoughts by another knock, and the face of another department’s detective, Kusaba, poked around the door. “Amon-san, I know you’re busy, but can I have your attention for a second please?” 

Amon nodded and Kusaba, followed by his partner Nakajima, walked into the room carrying a large briefcase. Kusaba glanced warily towards Mado briefly, and Amon assured him that it was fine. Nakajima placed the briefcase onto Amon’s paper-covered desk and unlatched the locks, flipping it open. “Amon, I can’t guarantee that this will be related to your case, but our timeline indicates that this took place within half an hour before Akira Mado’s last verified sighting. There was a similar power outage at the time, so we believe that there may be a connection, however.” 

Amon glanced at the contents of the briefcase and blinked in surprise. Laying on top of several pages filled with notes and an autopsy report was a large photograph, only recently developed, depicting what appeared to be a lavish room covered in red paint. Except when Amon looked closer, he realised that it wasn’t paint, and it wasn’t just any room. 

The room was one that he’d been in himself just the other day, the foyer in which the Lord of the Seventh City would make his addresses to citizens from, whilst seated in a large, golden, throne-like chair on a platform in the centre. The room in Amon’s memory was painted in blue and green hues with gold ornamentations running across the walls and a massive, three-tiered chandelier hanging from the ceiling above where the Lord would sit. In the photograph however, the only colour was red, washing over and coating everything. The giant chandelier lay in shattered pieces on the ground before the throne, * in which sat a garish looking corpse. 

The corpse seemed to be the source of most of the surrounding blood, as it’s chest was slashed open savagely and the ribcage twisted outward, organs spilling from within. One of the legs had been hacked away and lay underneath the chandelier, and the right arm was severely bruised and only hanging to the body by wounded muscle. The face had been similarly disfigured, the mouth slashed open at the corners and where the eyes should have been located were instead two dark holes, blood dripping outwards and down the sides of the face, their former occupants nowhere to be seen. The corpse was mostly unrecognisable due to the damage to the face, save for a simple golden crown resting on the corpse’s forehead. Two additional bodies lay either side of the chair wearing the grey uniform of soldiers, but they appeared to have suffered a much cleaner death than the crown-wearing body. 

* Amon looked back to Kusaba and Nakijima. “Is this … is the Lord dead?” 

The detectives nodded gravely and Mado looked up sharply, and snatched the photograph from Amon’s hands. Mado’s squinting eyes scanned the picture rapidly, before looking back to Amon. “I believe you already have a suspect, then?” 

“Excuse me?” replied Nakijima, looking at Mado in confusion. 

“This,” Mado said, flipping the picture over in his gloved hand so that it was facing towards his audience, “This is most certainly the work of a wolf.” 

\---

Kaneki was confused when he first woke up, forgetting that he’d agreed to spend the night at Hide’s. He blinked, and steadily the memories of last night returned to him. 

The shape of Hide’s brown wolf wasn’t lying by his side any longer, and Kaneki had changed back to his human form in his sleep. Maybe Hide had left when Kaneki turned back into a human? He supposed it was a bit strange to share a bed with a friend at their age, although was it different if you were both wolves, they were pack animals, right? Animals would like, huddle together to survive the winter, wouldn’t they? Kaneki stopped himself and shook his head, trying to get rid of his train of thought. 

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and opened the partition between the bedroom and the small living room, and found Hide sitting on the couch and watching the morning news on his beaten-up television, a bowl of cereal in his lap.

“Good mornin’!” Hide called, “I don’t have much in the way of breakfast unfortunately, but there’s plenty of cereal!” 

Kaneki nodded and walked over to the small kitchen, fixing himself a bowl of cornflakes and rummaging through Hide’s unwashed dishes to find himself a spoon. “Anything on the news?”

“Well.” Hide said, turning to Kaneki with a lot of emphasis. “Something happened at the Lord’s Keep last night, and those Southern Barracks we were at. The media must have a gag order though, because they’re not saying anything specific, just that ‘there was an incident.’ I wonder if that weird alarm had anything to do with it?” 

“What alarm?” asked Kaneki as he moved to sit on the couch next to Hide. On the television, there was a big tagline underneath the newsreader that read “Incident at Lord’s Southern Barracks Under Control”, with no clue or explanation as to what the incident had been. 

“Oh, that’s right, you were asleep. It was like, this super loud kind-of-screaming noise? It was coming from the Barracks, and it kinda sounded like this -” Hide proceeded to give a high-pitched wail and Kaneki jumped, and then threw a pillow at him. Hide grinned in response, “No, it was more like this -”, and gave Kaneki another ear splitting screech for his troubles. 

“Cut that out, your neighbours will call the police.” Kaneki rolled his eyes at Hide, although his thoughts turned back to his dream. “I think I did hear it, in my dream. Like how sometimes you can hear your alarm clock beeping in your dream before you wake up.” Kaneki scooped up a spoonful of cereal, “Although, in my dream, it was a girl screaming, not an alarm.” 

“A girl screaming? What were you doing to her, chasing her with a knife?” Hide said jokingly and Kaneki shot him a tired look. “Although, I guess it did sound like screaming. It seemed way too loud though, so I figured it was an alarm.” 

“Hmm,” Kaneki at his cereal, a few more of the details of his dream returning to him. “It was a strange dream. There was a young girl, and a Noblewoman I think? It was at a laboratory, and Nishio and that other scientist lady were there but I couldn’t really make them out at first.” 

“Nishio? That name sounds familiar, who’s that?” Hide asked, glancing over at Kaneki. 

“Oh, I guess I didn’t explain. He was the one who helped me get out of the Barracks, after the soldiers took me there. He was a wolf, too.” Kaneki replied, and Hide’s jaw dropped open. 

“You met _another_ wolf? How come you meet two wolves in this city on the same day, and I don’t find any for 12 years?” Hide gave an exaggerated pout and crossed his arms. “I can’t believe this, there’s three other wolves here and I didn’t even know.” 

“Well, really there’s only one, considering Rize got shot. And I’m not a proper wolf.” Kaneki replied as he finished his cereal, and placed his bowl on the ground next to him. “I just wish I knew what she did to me.” 

“I’d like to find that out as well,” Hide turned his eyes back to the television, his arms still crossed. “I thought that you had to be born a wolf, not that it was something you could be infected with.”

“Infected? That makes me sound diseased,” Kaneki frowned, and then looked at his still-bandaged arm. Should he try and change the dressings? “Although, she did bite me. Isn’t that how someone turns into a werewolf in all the movies?”

“Hmm,” Hide hummed loudly, moving his hands under his chin in a typical detective-style thinking pose. “I suppose you might just be the first case of a contagious werewolf disease. Do you need me to quarantine you on the full moon?” He smirked at Kaneki, whose face fell. “Sorry, I suppose that isn’t very reassuring.” 

“It’s fine.” Kaneki shook his head and shifted so that his knees were directly in front of him, and pulled them close to his chest. “I just want to know how to fix it, so I can go back to be normal.” 

Hide’s smile faded into a small frown, and he turned back to the television set. Did Hide find that rude or offensive if he implied that he wasn’t normal? Being a wolf wasn’t normal though, was it? Even so, he should probably pick his words more carefully in the future. 

Hide had seemed so excited to find another wolf, even more so that the wolf he found was his best friend. But he had to understand that Kaneki didn’t want to stay like this, he needed to fix this whole thing as soon as possible. He wasn’t meant to be a wolf and deal with being attacked by bigger wolves and gun-toting hunters alike. And even if Hide was a wolf, he seemed totally fine at keeping it to himself, and after all he'd been through, Kaneki would probably prefer it like that. 

“Do you think that Nishio guy would know anything about what Rize did? He probably knows more about the whole wolf thing than me.” Hide said suddenly, jolting Kaneki out of his thoughts. 

“Oh, that’s a good idea! He said he was a doctor,” Kaneki scratched his head, glad that the conversation had resumed. “Or that he was training to be a doctor, at least. He worked at the Barracks.” 

Hide’s mood seemed to brighten at that, “So we should sneak into the Barracks and find him! I’ve always wanted to snoop around in the Lord’s Domains.” 

“What?” Kaneki turned to him suddenly, “I had to sneak out of there just yesterday! And I was a nervous wreck, I’m not built for sneaking around.” 

Hide grinned and slapped his arm around Kaneki’s shoulder, “Don’t you want to ask this Nishio guy a few questions? Besides, I’m an _excellent_ snooper.” 

\---

It turned out that Hide was somewhat less of an accomplished snooper than what he’d thought. 

He and Kaneki had made it safely to the Barracks, even if Kaneki was shaking, jumping at everything and needed to double back home after a few minutes when he realised he was missing his eyepatch. They’d only started to run into problems when they made their way to the elevator at the centre of the large foyer. When it wouldn’t budge despite Hide having pushed every button, Kaneki then remembered that Nishio had mentioned a keycard yesterday. And then a soldier had opened the elevator and berated them for pushing the emergency stop button, and when Hide and Kaneki didn’t have a good enough reason for being there, the soldier had cuffed them and taken them to the lockup downstairs. 

“This could have gone worse,” Hide said after the guard left them, and peered out the bars of the small cell they were left in. The lockup was old and rusting, and built to hold many more occupants than those who were currently contained. The few others were all separated into other cells further down the hall, and had glared at Hide and Kaneki as they were led to their own.

“Oh yes, I could have been shot again.” Kaneki groaned, curling up on the floor of the cell and looking at the rusted handcuffs on his wrists. He didn’t want to say outright to Hide that this had been a terrible idea, but this had been, frankly, a terrible idea. And he doubted that Nishio would be wandering the cells to rescue him a second time. 

“Well, that’s true.” Hide turned to Kaneki, “But you didn’t, so it can’t be that bad. Now we just gotta get out of here.” In a smooth motion, Hide swapped from his human form to his dark brown wolf form, pulled his paws free from the handcuffs binding them, and then back to his human form. He looked back to Kaneki and rotated his wrist around a few times. “Those weren’t very comfortable. Do you need me to help you with yours?” 

Kaneki took in a deep breath, “No, let me see if I can get it.” He closed his eyes and focused on the white wolf from his dream, and when he opened them, he was the white wolf. He kicked the rusty cuffs off his paws and then turned to Hide. “I can’t slip through those cell bars even like this, though.” 

Hide looked from the bars back to Kaneki’s wolf form, “Hmm. Maybe you could try and pull that all apart with your jaws?”

Kaneki looked back at Hide with a wolf frown, “Why do I have to?” 

“C’mon, just give it a shot?” Hide gave a pleading look, “I’ll help, I promise.” 

“Alright, alright.” Kaneki padded over to the cell bars and examined them briefly. Like his handcuffs, they seemed to be older and rusted from use. One of them also seemed to have been almost sawn in half by a previous tenant. While Kaneki didn’t particularly want to put that in his mouth, he didn’t have any better suggestions. He gripped the half-sawn bar in his jaws and pulled forcefully, only to be surprised when it gave out quickly and fell out of place. 

“This place is really badly maintained,” said Hide as Kaneki loosened another bar, making a gap big enough for the pure white wolf to slip through. Hide fit through with a bit of squeezing in his human shape and joined Kaneki on the other side, who was focusing intently on changing back. 

When he was human again, he looked at Hide as he readjusted his eyepatch. “I’ve never broken out of jail before.” 

“This is barely a real jail,” replied Hide, looking for an exit past the numerous cell blocks, and set off down the hallway. He was only stopped when someone called out to them - “Hey, you two idiot wolves.” 

Kaneki froze and turned around to the source of the voice, a single figure within a cell adjacent to them, sitting on the bare frame of a bed leaning against the wall. It was a short girl dressed in the uniform of the Lord’s School, with short-cut and dark purple hair, and a fringe that hung down over one eye. 

Hide jumped in front of Kaneki, “What, there’s no wolves here. You didn’t see any wolves.” 

The girl rolled her eyes and stood up, looking up and down Hide and Kaneki. “Even if I didn’t, I can still smell you two idiots. I’m surprised the humans can’t tell from how much you stink.” 

Kaneki sniffed at his armpit reflexively - what was with girls and telling him he smelled? He looked back at the girl and squinted his eyes at her, and caught the shape of a wolf overlapping with her human form. “Hide, she’s a wolf.” 

Hide looked back at Kaneki in surprise, “How are you so good at finding wolves?” He shook his head and turned back to the girl, “And what do you want?” 

The girl walked to the cell door and investigated the lock holding her cell shut. “Did either of you see another wolf in here? I heard they caught one, he’s a bit taller than me and has greasy-ass hair, and a shitty tattoo of a rabbit on his arm.” 

Kaneki moved around Hide to get a better look at the girl, “We haven’t seen the guy you’re looking for, sorry. The wolf they had caught here wasn’t him, and he uh, escaped.” 

The girl raised her eyebrow at Kaneki, “So you got caught in the same Barracks twice? Idiots.” 

“Hey!” Hide shouted in indignation as Kaneki sheepishly looked away. The girl yanked at her cell’s lock with strength that Kaneki wouldn’t have expected from her, and the rusted metal crumbled and fell to the ground. The door swung open, and she brushed down her uniform before leaving the cell. 

“I’m not waiting around if Ayato isn’t here,” she said as she walked over to Kaneki, who shuffled behind Hide to avoid her. 

“Who _is_ Ayato?” Asked Hide, seemingly unaware or ignoring Kaneki’s apprehension towards her, “Who are you, I thought there weren’t any other wolves in this city?” 

“He’s my kid brother.” the girl replied, glancing down the hallway. “As for other wolves in the city, I only know me and him. And my name is Kirishima.” Kirishima stretched slightly, and then turned back to Hide and Kaneki. “What are you doing here?” 

Hide opened his mouth and started to say something about how it wasn’t any of her business, but Kaneki interrupted, “We’re looking for a wolf named Nishio who works here, but we got stuck trying to get upstairs.” 

Kirishima didn’t seem to recognise the name and continued to stretch, twisting her back around. “Did you try the fire escape? That shouldn’t be locked.” 

“I was going to suggest that next!” Hide said quickly - too quickly, in a way that made Kaneki and Kirishima very sure that he was not actually going to suggest that. The girl didn’t flinch. 

“You two may seem to be idiots,” she glared at Hide between stretches, “but three wolves are better than one. I’ll help you find this Nishio guy if you help me track down my brother. Deal?” she held her hand out expectantly. 

Hide cocked his head and opened his mouth to say something, but he was beaten to the punch by Kaneki, moving in front of him and clasping Kirishima’s hand, “Deal.”


	7. of parents and flower shops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> touka, kaneki and hide explore the laboratory

“So, what are you two idiots called?” Kirishima asked as she led Kaneki and Hide down the cell-lined hallway. The other prisoners in the cells didn’t seem to pay them any attention, and there were no guards on this floor, so Kaneki wondered why they didn’t just break the rusting grates holding them there and escape. Surely a soldier’s lockup would be more secure than this?

“I’m Hideyoshi Nagachika, but you can call me Hide!” said Hide enthusiastically, holding out his hand to the girl to shake, which she looked at but didn’t take. 

“And my name is Ken Kaneki,” Kaneki added, and Kirishima looked back at him for a second and studied his face. 

“What’s wrong with your eye, Ken-kun?” she asked as they reached the end of the hallway, and they investigated the elevator leading upstairs. “You’re really covered in bandages.”

“Please just call me Kaneki,” Kaneki replied, and the girl shrugged. Kaneki never went by his first name, even when he was with people close to him like Hide. That had been the case really since his mother had died, and he’d first moved in with her sister, his aunt. His only cousin’s name was Kentaro, and his aunt had refused to call him Ken as she insisted it was too similar, so he was just Kaneki. He didn’t mind, since Kaneki was his mother’s married name and fairly unique, and it was nothing like his aunt’s family name, or close to his cousin’s name. As a result, whenever he was called Ken it just seemed to remind him of his aunt, so he insisted on going by just ‘Kaneki’ whenever he could.  
“The bandages are from a fight yesterday, and my eye isn't hurt, it’s just - it’s weird.” 

“Weird how?” Kirishima reached out her hand to grab at the eyepatch, and Kaneki shied away. 

“He’s got a wolf’s eye, like, even when he’s a human.” Hide butted in, poking Kaneki’s cheek, who sighed. As much as Hide liked secrets, he didn’t seem all that talented at keeping them to himself (other than the wolf thing, which appeared to be the only secret he’d ever successfully kept). Kaneki lifted the eyepatch so that Kirishima could get a look, and she leaned in close to Kaneki’s face for a few seconds and stared, making Kaneki’s cheeks go red from the sudden attention. 

“That’s weird, what did you do to it?” she asked as she turned back around, her attention turning to a small steel door a few feet away. “That should be the fire escape, by the way, if you want to go upstairs without getting locked up down here again.” 

“I didn’t do anything,” Kaneki replied, readjusting the eyepatch, “I don’t know how it happened.” 

“Kaneki’s not a _real_ wolf,” Hide added quickly, and Kaneki groaned internally at his friend’s love to overshare. They’d just met Kirishima, what if she turned around and attacked them like Rize? “He got turned into a wolf by this crazy wolf lady.” 

Kirishima scoffed as she opened the door to the fire escape, and walked over to the small, dark staircase contained within. The fire escape’s stairwell was a plain grey concrete and barely lit by a single skylight floors and floors above them and the pale green ‘Exit’ signs above each level’s doors. “Your eye might be creepy, but I’m not that stupid. You can’t get turned into a wolf.” 

Kaneki exhaled loudly, deciding that he wasn’t a big fan of Kirishima’s dismissive and aloof attitude. What made her the expert on wolf things, anyways? “Well, that’s what happened. The wolf we’re looking for is a doctor, he might know more about it.” 

Kirishima shrugged again and ascended up the staircase quickly, Kaneki and Hide behind her. “What floor is this guy on?” 

“Oh, I met him on the twenty-third, but I’m not sure if that’s where he works,” replied Kaneki and Hide let out a loud sigh and made some exhausted-sounding noises as he reached the landing at the top of the first staircase. Kaneki rolled his eyes at him and Hide poked out his tongue in a cheeky tone. 

“I guess we’ll just find out, then.” Kirishima replied back, dashing up the next staircase without waiting for them. Hide’s eyes followed her as she disappeared around the corner, and suddenly rushed past Kaneki and up to her side. 

“Well then, what about you then, what’s your story?” he asked conversationally, and Kirishima glared back at him, moving past Hide and onto the next set of stairs. 

“My brother’s a dumbass, and I’m the one who always has to get him out of trouble. Since he was in a raid on these Barracks last night, I thought that maybe he’d be brought into custody, so I snuck in. No sign of him so far, though.” she replied shortly, scaling another staircase as she did, and Kaneki picked up his pace so that he wouldn’t get left behind. 

Kaneki glanced at the uniform she wore, a familiar grey skirt and blazer of The Lord’s School, although they were faded with age and a few sizes too big on her. It reminded him of his own uncomfortable second-hand blazer when he’d studied there. He’d only graduated two years previously, and while she couldn’t have been much younger than him, he didn’t recognise her at all. 

The pin on her collar with three bars identified her as being a third year in the high school, and the small embroidered ‘B’ above the school’s logo on her chest matched the one that had been on Hide’s blazers - ‘B’ for ‘Boarding School.’ That was on the uniforms of every child who was “in the Lord’s care,” the nice name for the city’s foster-care system. In practice, it was barely a foster system with all the children housed in a large dormitory together, and Kaneki had never met anyone who’d actually been placed with foster parents, let alone adopted out. All the boarding kids he’d been in school with had simply aged out when they graduated, like Hide. 

He wondered what had happened to Kirishima’s parents for her to end up at the boarding house. Perhaps they were gone like Hide’s, or they hadn’t been able to look after her (or didn’t want to) and put her in the system when she was born. Almost all of the children who went to the Lord’s School were missing parents in some fashion or otherwise impoverished, because most parents would have avoided sending their children to the crumbling, underfunded school if they could have. Kaneki began attending when he first moved in with his aunt, but she’d always made the payments to send her own son to one of the nicer private schools. 

“You’re a high schooler, right? Won’t the dorm leader notice that you’re not in class?” Kaneki asked Kirishima as they passed the 9th floor, marked by a steel door with a bold ‘9’ in white paint across it.

Kirishima shook her head, and then ran her hand through her fringe, “They cancelled classes because of that ‘incident at the Lord’s House’, everyone was told to stay in their rooms. And if they knock on the door, my roommate will say I’m there.”

The rest of the climb upward passed in silence, mostly without incident. At one point, they heard one of the stairwell doors opening below them and all hid, standing flat against the wall for what seemed like an eternity, until Kirishima looked downwards and called an all-clear. Hide seemed too exhausted from all the steps to ask more questions, Kaneki noticed. 

As they rounded the 20th floor, Kaneki heard Kirishima stop suddenly above them, and a somewhat smug-sounding voice called out to her: “If you’re looking for the Flower Maiden, you’re a bit late,”

Kaneki dashed up the stairs, fearing Kirishima had been caught by a soldier who had been waiting for them. When he reached the landing however, he was confused when he didn’t spot a soldier standing next to Kirishima, but instead a fat, grey cat lounging against the wall, its long tail flicking lazily. 

“I’m looking for a wolf named Nishio, you know anyone like that?” Kirishima replied directly to the cat, who looked from her and then to Kaneki as he made his way to their landing, panting. 

The grey cat suddenly jumped up and hissed profusely at Kaneki, dashing into a corner and raising its hackles threateningly. It held out a clawed paw threatening to him, and Kirishima turned and looked around at Kaneki with an annoyed expression, “What did you do to her?”

“What? Nothing!” Kaneki replied as Hide finally rounded the stairs and dashed up to his side and looked around. “I’ve never even seen this cat before.” 

The cat hissed again, “I can smell you, half-breed. Haven’t you done enough harm here?” 

Kaneki looked back at the cat - had it spoken? The cat was speaking to him, and he could understand it? Was the cat a were-cat as well? Kirishima looked from the feline to Kaneki and asked, “What did you do when you got caught here?” 

“Nothing! Nishio-san found me, and then I left! Is the cat secretly a person too?” he said in a panicked tone of voice, looking to Hide, who chuckled lightly and shook his head. 

Kirishima laughed as well and looked back to the small grey bundle of claws, “No, the cat’s not a person. What did he do to you, puss?” 

The cat looked at Kirishima, her teeth still bared threateningly. “I have a name, wolf. You call me Maris Stella.'' She flicked her long tail at Kaneki, “A half-breed like that one destroyed my laboratory last night, stole two of my wards. She smelled just like you.”

“A half-breed?” Hide pondered out loud, looking at Kaneki suddenly. 

Kirishima clicked her tongue, “Well, it wasn’t this half-breed, he’s too stupid to pull of something like that. Have you seen a Nishio or not?” She ignored Kaneki’s annoyed resistance - he wasn’t that stupid, right? How was it his fault he didn’t know everything about wolves? 

“Hmpf!” the cat turned her head dramatically and sat down in a smooth motion, and began to preen her whiskers. “You mean the glasses-wearing wolf, yes? Your half-breed friend stole him and my Akira last night.” 

“Stole him? A ha- half-breed kidnapped him?” Kaneki asked the cat - Maris Stella, she’d said - with a wavering voice, still trying to get used to addressing a feline like a person. What did she even mean by ‘half-breed,’ was he half a wolf after the fight with Rize?

“I was under the assumption that all you wolves and half-wolves knew each other.” Maris Stella’s head cocked to the side, and her grey tail swished across the concrete, as she thought for a few seconds and considered Kaneki standing in front of her. 

“You seem quite clueless, the lot of you,” she said eventually, earning an annoyed look from Kirishima, “but you don’t seem malicious. I’ll show you to the laboratory where the glasses wolf worked before last night. Perhaps he left something for you.” 

She stood up and pawed at the entrance to the 21st floor until it opened slightly, and slunk through the gap. Kirishima caught the door before it closed and looked for anyone waiting on the other side before following the cat. Kaneki turned to Hide and then suddenly jumped when he realised Hide was leaning over his shoulder, sniffing at him. 

“What are you doing?” Kaneki yelped as he jumped in surprise, and Hide moved his hand behind his head sheepishly. 

“Uh, sorry. The cat said you smelled like a half-breed, so I thought maybe that’s to do with this whole wolf thing, right.” Hide said, leaning back and putting his hands into his green jacket’s brightly-coloured pockets. “But I don’t think it really does, since you smell pretty much the same as always. You always did smell a bit like a wolf, but I just figured that was because you hung around me so much. I guess that part’s more concentrated now, but you still smell like a human at the same time, if that makes any sense?” Hide asked awkwardly before turning away,

“What do you mean, that I smelled like a wolf before?” Kaneki was confused, but thought about what Hide had said for a few more seconds. “Rize actually said something like that, right before she attacked me.” 

“I dunno what it means, sorry,” Hide shrugged as he reopened the door to the 21st floor and walked out, where Kaneki could see Kirishima and the cat Maris Stella waiting for him in an artificially bright hallway. “I’ve never been the best at figuring out scents.” 

Kaneki followed him through the door, thinking about the scents that everyone seemed to be talking about. True, he seemed to be able to smell things better now, but he couldn’t pick anything out and track it like a dog. He gave his armpit an experimental sniff, but all he could pick up was the deodorant he’d borrowed from Hide earlier. 

Besides, he had no idea what the cat could mean by ‘half-breed,’ if it didn’t mean that he was now somehow half a wolf? The words seemed to imply that he’d been well, _bred_ , from humans and wolves, and that just couldn’t be possible. 

From what his aunt had told him and his few memories of his mother, his parents had both been painfully normal and average humans. Kaneki’s mother had been born and raised in Seventh City with her younger sister, and had started a small florists shop as a young adult. The shop had gone under in a few short years, as it was rather difficult to import flowers into Seventh City with it’s almost year-round snow and poor weather. She’d used to say that really the only thing that the store had brought her other than debts was Kaneki’s father, since she’d originally met him there when he applied for a job. Eventually the debts and the exhaustion and the loneliness of single parenthood caught up to her, and she’d leapt from one of the tall buildings in the city centre. 

Kaneki could barely remember what her flower store had looked like when it was open during his earliest years, but he could still picture it more clearly than his father. He knew even less about him as he’d always just been a figure others mentioned in passing and a photograph on his mother’s mantelpiece, having died before Kaneki was even born. He’d been from outside the city according to his aunt, who had despised him, and had left Kaneki a massive pile of books that he’d slowly read his way through as a child. In one of his memories of his father’s bookshelf, Kaneki’s mother mentioned that his father had wanted to be an author and had several manuscripts, which the young child had avidly searched for, only to be disappointed when he found they were nonfiction biology texts. Kaneki didn’t truly know what had killed his father at such a young age as his mother had never told him. His aunt insisted that it was because the man was a drunkard, but Kaneki wasn’t sure if he should really trust her word. 

Nonetheless, his parents seemed too boring to be related to wolves in any way. But supposing that Maris Stella was somehow right, why hadn’t Kaneki noticed anything before now? How had no one, not his aunt or cousin, or mother or even Hide, ever noticed something before? It just didn’t seem feasible. 

He was brought out of his thoughts when Maris Stella stopped at a large doorway, police tape and bright red ‘DO NOT ENTER’ stickers stretched across it. The cat ignored these and headed inside, but Kaneki exchanged a glance with Hide and asked - “Is this okay?”, only for Kirishima to squeeze her way past without hesitating at all. Hide shrugged and followed her, followed by the nervous Kaneki. 

Kaneki stepped inside the room and his eyes opened wide, a sense of deja-vu suddenly creeping over him. He looked around the room and to the identical white desks with computers sitting on them, and then to the room’s centrepiece, what would have been a giant glass tank hooked up to a multitude of status-output reading monitors, if it hadn’t been smashed open and empty. This was the laboratory from his dream, where he’d seen the Noble and the young girl screaming. His hands shook as he looked back to Hide - “I know this place.” 

“What? You didn’t say you were in a lab yesterday.” Hide said as he looked around, and Kaneki shook his head. 

“I haven’t been here but - but I’ve seen it, in a dream.” Kaneki looked at the shattered glass tank in the centre of the room again to confirm it, and suddenly picked up on a faint scent coming from the shards of glass. He walked over to it and the scent grew stronger, and he realised that he recognised it. There was something deeply nostalgic about it, and it pulled him back to the time where he was a small boy, sitting on the dusty floor of a small flower shop in the backstreets of the city with a book open on his lap. “It smells like Lunar Flowers.” 

“Of course it does,” replied Maris Stella smugly, leaping onto a desk and turning to face the ruins of the glass tank. “This was the abode of the Lunar Flower Maiden.” 

“What?” said Kirishima and Hide at the same time, and Kaneki turned around in confusion. 

“Isn’t the Flower Maiden a myth?” Kirishima asked the cat, who flicked her tail at the tank. Kirishima walked over to Kaneki’s side slowly and examined it, before sniffing at it curiously. “I thought there weren’t any Lunar Flowers left?” 

Hide rushed over to the tank as well, looking at it with big curious eyes and holding out a hand to touch the shattered glass. “It smells just like what my mum used to say.” 

“What’s the Lunar Flower Maiden?” Kaneki nudged Hide in the shoulder as he asked, and the blond teenager glanced at him. 

“She’s like, she’s a character from the bedtime stories my mum used to tell me, way back when.” He said, his attention turning back to the tank and the tiny pools of green liquid settled between the glass at it’s base. “Mum said they were legends passed down from her parents.”

“The Moon’s Flowers, in the form of a young Maiden, will call on the last of the wolf warriors, and she will lead them to the ends of the earth, where they will find a Paradise for all,” Kirishima recited quietly, and Kaneki turned to her. “It’s _the Flower’s Paradise_ , from _the Prophecies of the Red Moon_ ,” she said quickly, running her hand through the long fringe that hung in front of her eye. 

_“The Prophecies of the Red Moon_?” Kaneki repeated, wondering where he’d heard that before, and then it hit him. “That’s the book that Rize wanted to find when we were looking through the bookstores, she asked me if I knew about it.” 

Kirishima’s head picked up at Rize’s name, but before she could say anything she was interrupted by Hide, “She wouldn’t have been able to find it man, that book has been banned. A librarian once yelled at me when I asked about it when I was ten. He said it was banned by the Nobles for being a pagan legend.” 

“Banned?” asked Maris Stella, sitting on her desk, before turning to the lockers that lined the back wall of the laboratory. She leapt to the floor and then disappeared underneath the small gap between the lockers and the floor, before reappearing a few seconds later with a leather-bound book in her jaws. “I suppose that makes sense why it was hidden from those detectives, then.” 

She dragged the book onto the desk and Kaneki walked over and examined the cover. It was a dark leather with golden embellishments, and long cursive letters on the front in a deep red that proclaimed the book was _‘The Retold Prophecies of the Red Moon_.’ “What’s it about, Maris Stella?” 

The cat turned up her nose at Kaneki sharply and gave him a glare, “Not all of us have the privilege of turning into humans and going to human schools to learn how to read human books, half-breed.”

“Oh. My apologies,” Kaneki tried to sound genuine but the cat didn’t appear to care for it, and he flipped open the book to a large illustration covering the centre pages. The watercolour picture was a large and ornate spread, with a group of black wolves running towards the giant moon, floating above a young girl in a long yellow dress with flowers embroidered over it. She held her small hands out to the wolves racing across the opposing page with a serene grin. “That’s Hinami,” Kaneki realised. 

“Oh? You do know the Maiden?” Maris Stella looked up at Kaneki with her yellow eyes, and Kirishima left the glass tank’s side to investigate the ornate book next to Kaneki. 

“Not really, I saw her in a dream, I guess?” Kaneki replied, realising that saying it out loud seemed kind of stupid. “She was being attacked by a Noblewoman, in this lab, and she was screaming for help.” 

Maris Stella cocked her head at him, and Kirishima flipped through the book in front of them. “I heard it too, a scream in the middle of the night. I thought I’d imagined it, but she was calling for us.” She stopped for a few moments and thought to herself, before suddenly shutting the book and handing it to Kaneki. 

“Well, that is interesting and all, but Maris Stella says that your Nishio guy got kidnapped,” she said quickly, glancing back at Hide, who seemed to be preoccupied with something in his wallet. “I believe you agreed to find my brother now?” 

“Oh, I suppose that’s right.” Kaneki took the book from her, glancing at Maris Stella to see if she’d object, but the cat just flicked her tail as usual. He supposed Kirishima didn’t want to stay around any longer. 

Kaneki studied the front cover of the book for an author’s credit but couldn’t find one, and when he opened to the publishing details, all he could find was ‘Reproduced and compiled by Takatsuki Sen’ in small typeface. The publishing details indicated that the book wasn’t the original version, but a reproduction that had been made after the original was banned, compiled together from multiple oral retellings of the stories. It must have been a great deal of work, and on a project that would ultimately be banned as well, instead of receiving any recognition. He wondered what about the book had caused it to be banned, and decided that he’d have to read and investigate it further. 

Kaneki was flicking through the first few pages when he was interrupted by Hide, who placed a hand on his shoulder suddenly. “Hey, can I see your Citizen’s ID for a second?” 

Kirishima looked at Hide sharply and snatched something out of his hand - it was the chunky shape of Hide’s Citizen’s Identification. His picture, address and date of birth were printed on the plastic on one side, and a large barcode and chip on the other that would allow him back into the city if he left, as well as being linked to other databases such as the public transit system, his college, and most importantly, his bank account. Most notably however, the thick brick of technology was hooked up to the police database, helping them locate criminals. The tiny LED light set in the corner of Hide’s ID was blinking a threatening bright red instead of the usual blue. 

“You brought your ID when you were trying to sneak into one of the Lord’s Domains?” Kirishima growled at Hide, who held up his hands across his face at the noise. “You realise that’s why the lockup is so crappy, right? Because they just ping your ID if you leave?” 

“Look, what if we needed to catch a train home?” Hide attempted to defend himself, and Kaneki fished around in his own pockets for his wallet and pulled out his own ID, almost dropping it when he saw the same red LED flashing in the corner of his. 

“What do we do? Are the soldiers going to come after us?” Kaneki panicked, turning to Kirishima, who made an impatient noise and grabbed the ID out of Kaneki’s hand. 

She threw both of them on the floor and lifted up her heel to stomp down on them, only interrupted by Hide yelping, “Wait a second, that’s all my money and everything there!” 

Kirishima glared back at Hide and crushed them underfoot regardless, the plastic picture of Kaneki cracking under the pressure and the flickering lightbulb of Hide’s ID shattering. “It’s a fucking tracker too, you idiot.” Kirishima growled as she brought her foot down again, miscellaneous computer pieces and plastic skittering across the floor as she did. 

“What do we do now, I can’t get back into class without that!” Kaneki panicked, his hands shaking as he watched Kirishima kick the shattered pieces of his ID underneath a desk. She glared back at him and put her hands on her hips. 

“How were you going to get back to class with the soldiers after you?” she hissed, and turned towards the laboratory’s large door. “We need to get out of here.” 

“Where are we going to go?” Hide asked, bending down and poking at the smashed pieces of his ID. 

Kaneki’s head was reeling - oh god, he really was a criminal now. It had just seemed like, like a fun adventure before and now he was wanted by the law. His ID was gone too, he wasn’t going to be able to catch any trains or spend any money, what could he do now? He was a fugitive, what was he going to do? What if the soldiers brought him into custody and he turned into a wolf? 

“Work out something later, for now we need to go.” Kirishima interrupted his thoughts and Kaneki looked at her with a desperate expression. Where could they even go? 

Kirishima walked over to the door and tore apart some of the police tape across the entrance, and then glanced down the hallway. “Maris Stella, where’s the nearest way out?” 

Kaneki jumped when the cat moved on the desk, and sat up straight. “There’s a balcony at the breakroom all the way, otherwise you’ll need to go back the way you came.” she said, her eyes glinting and a faint smirk on her feline face. 

“Balcony it is,” Kirishima decided, and looked back to Hide and Kaneki, who seemed to be vibrating with nervous energy. “Are you coming or not?” 

Hide grabbed at Kaneki’s shoulder and he jumped, “C’mon, we gotta go.” Kaneki nodded, and the three of them took off down the hallway. Kaneki ran, his heart beating a thousand times faster than normal and his brain reeling with a thousand different ways this situation could end horribly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just wanted to clarify the technology in this kind of setting - it's meant to be like, retro-futurism but specifically based on late 90's/early 2000'sey type tech (so basically, what we thought future technology would look like in 2001). imagine the citizen's id is like, as thick as a gameboy with barely any other special functions to it.  
> and here's a rough guide to the character's ages coz i've changed some of them from canon - touka/ayato - 17 | kaneki/hide/rize - 19-21 | amon/akira/takizawa - 30-ish | nishio - 23/4  
> also! have been considering changing the fic's name to another song from the wolf's rain soundtrack, specifically [could you bite the hand?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6XdZMJ8Vsc). i've made [strawpoll that you can vote in](http://www.strawpoll.me/42424589), i'll leave it open for a few days or so. next two chapters are almost finished, expect them soon.


	8. airship / wolf's song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> akira wakes on the noble's airship. touka teaches kaneki a song

“Your name is Akira Mado, yes?” 

Akira blinked in a daze, and looked around, trying to identify her surroundings. A small room with dark iron walls, an expensive-looking rug the only furniture other than the plastic fold-out chair she’d fallen asleep on. To her left was a large circular window with thin blinds covering it, and beyond that the uninterrupted blue sky. That was right, this was the Noble’s airship. 

How long had she been asleep? It was day outside the window, how long had it been since the Noblewoman had taken her from the labs? She couldn’t remember much after she’d left the laboratory, except being taken to the ornate airship that had been waiting outside the dome, and being told by the guards to not go near the bridge. She’d wandered off and been separated from Nishio at some point. When had she fallen asleep, where were they now? 

“Mado-san?” a voice asked again, and Akira shook her head and looked towards the sound of the noise. The Flower Maiden stood before her, fully animated and conscious - the Noble had injected her with something, hadn’t she? In the daylight streaming through the blinds, the Maiden looked even more like a regular human girl than she had in the artificial, buzzing lights of the lab, her face having finally gained some colour. 

She was holding a plate, a piece of bread with an orange spread sitting on it. The Maiden gave Akira another inquisitorial look when she didn’t respond, and reached out her hand to touch her shoulder, the long sleeves of her tunic shifting and the large red flower-shaped tattoo-like marking on her forearms becoming visible. Akira shifted before the Maiden could touch her, “Yes, I’m Mado.” 

The Maiden smiled serenely, and placed the plate of bread next to Akira. “You have cared for this one, I have been told. I have this for you, please eat.” 

Akira glanced towards the bread and then around the room again, but there didn’t seem to be anyone watching them or even guarding them. She hadn’t seen anyone on the airship except the two guards who’d prevented her from getting any closer to the bridge, where she figured the Noblewoman was. She supposed they wouldn’t need many guards when the only way off the ship was directly down. The staffing seemed sparse compared to the Seventh City’s Lord’s Domains, at the very least. She sniffed at the bread, and took a bite when she decided it was satisfactory. 

The Maiden’s smile spread wider as Akira took another bite of the bread, and she quickly gulped it all down and placed the plate back at her side, the first food she’d had since last night.

Akira considered the girl in front of her, thinking about the three years spent studying her hibernating form, trying desperately to get her to do, well, anything. And now she was standing before her, looking and moving like a regular child, if her tattoo-markings and those red eyes were hidden. Did she remember her years asleep, when Akira had injected her with who knows how many substances to see if she’d react? 

The Maiden moved next to Akira and sat down next to her, and Akira shifted a bit uncomfortably. The girl didn’t seem to notice however, and glanced out the window nearby. “May I ask where we are?” 

Akira shook her head, “No. I mean, I don’t know.” She examined what she could see outside the window and tried her best to make out any landmarks below them. There was a single winding road, snaking through terrain that looked like a dry prairie, nothing like the snowfields that usually covered the land around the Seventh City. There were mountains in the distance, but she wasn’t versed enough in any form of geography to try and identify them. “We were taken from the Seventh City.” 

The Maiden’s head cocked to the side, confused, and Akira remembered that she’d been asleep since the Greater War, perhaps even earlier. The world must have looked entirely different when she was last active. “It’s a city in the north, with snow.” 

The Maiden thought for a second, “We are heading towards the south, I believe. I have been enjoying my time looking out the windows of this aircraft.” 

Akira kept her eyes fixed on the rocky horizon below, wondering if the mountains were close to her childhood home. It was unlikely, as the town she’d grown up in had been surrounded by a thick wild brush, not the endless prairie she could see. The Maiden shifted beside her, and Akira turned her attention back to her as she rose to her feet. 

“I apologise, I believe we haven't been properly introduced. I am the one called Hinami, the Maiden and Emissary of the Lunar Flowers.” she bowed smoothly to Akira, “I hope that we get along in the future.” 

Akira nodded, and the Maiden stood up straight again and looked back at her expectantly. “I’m Akira Mado, but you seem to know that already. I’m a researcher and scientist working for the Lord of the Seventh City.” she replied, unsure if the Maiden already knew this, fishing around in the pockets of her lab coat for a second. She’d left her purse under her desk at work with her ID, but she might have been lucky and … yes, her pager was still in her pocket. She pulled it out and checked the green-tinted screen for messages, but the only message was the device informing her that she was out of the range of the city’s transmission towers. She wondered how far they could have travelled in one night, airships truly did move much faster than cars and trains. 

“This is not the aircraft of the Seventh City Lord, is it?” the Maiden replied, looking around with those dark red and inhuman looking eyes. “The guardians said we were to arrive at Lord Eto’s Keep shortly.” 

“Lord Eto?” echoed Akira. That must be the name of the green-haired Noble, she guessed. She’d never been much for inter-city politics, so she didn’t recognise the name or where she originated from. She cursed herself for not following it more, perhaps then she’d have more of a clue where she was, and where she was going, and maybe even why the Lady had wanted her and the Flower Maiden in the first place. 

“Is that a terminal?” the Maiden asked as Akira fiddled absently with her pager, watching her. “We may be able to use the inter-network even from here.” 

“A terminal?” Akira replied, juggling the pager between her hands. “Do you mean a computer terminal, like a PC? This is just a pager, it uses a radio.” she held it out to the Maiden, who cautiously took it from her and examined it. “I don’t know anything about an inter-network, however.” 

“Hmm,” the Maiden replied, and flipped the pager onto its back and began to disassemble it. “This seems to be a simple version of the technology I used to use. I was able to use a program called the interconnected-network, to send messages and retrieve knowledge from sources across the continent.” 

“That sounds illegal,” Akira replied, watching as the Maiden carefully removed the pieces of the pager and placed them on the ground next to her. When she was done investigating it, she delicately replaced every piece until the pager was whole and reassembled, and she passed it back to Akira. “The Lord wouldn’t want citizens to send messages across the continent, that would be a system built for spies.” 

The Maiden blinked, “Perhaps.” She seemed to be knowledgeable with technology then, Akira thought. Maybe she could ask her about how she had been made, and the other questions that had stumped the researchers at the laboratory. Perhaps that was why the Lord Eto had awakened her? With a more powerful Noble’s budget and access to technology, it would be possible to do much more than her lab had been able to. 

The Flower Maiden suddenly moved towards the door, startling Akira for a movement. “Where are you going?” 

“I must check on the others,” she replied, turning around to face Akira, her clothes flowing around her. “You may accompany me, of course.” 

Others? Did she mean the guards, the Noblewoman or Nishio, or maybe even more that she hadn’t seen on the airship before? Akira was hesitant, but no one had stopped from wandering about last night. At the very least, she might be able to find and ask someone with more information about where they were, what they were doing and why she was caught up in it all. 

The Maiden took off down the hallway, her short brown hair bouncing with her steps. Akira stuffed her pager back into her pocket, and followed her into the hallway. She’d never been in an airship before this one, and she couldn’t say that she enjoyed the loud noises of the engines and the occasional shuddering of the entire craft. The Maiden didn’t seem to be bothered, however, and Akira wondered if she’d spent her life before hibernation and the war aboard Nobles’ crafts like this one. 

She led Akira through empty rooms with lavish interiors and dust-covered furniture which caught her attention, but she wasn’t left with time to explore. The airship, or at least, the large luxury sections built for impressing and entertaining fellow Nobles, seemed to have been barely touched in years and left to sit and wait for a time they would be used again. 

The pair reached a ballroom filled with sheet-covered tables and Akira’s eyes opened wide, wondering how large the aircraft must be and trying to compare that to the dark exterior she’d seen the night before. The Maiden ran towards the curtain covered stage in one corner of the ballroom, and with some difficulty, attempted to climb onto the raised stage area. 

Akira caught up to her eventually, and grabbed the Maiden’s frail form, lifting her onto the stage. The girl turned back around and smiled happily at Akira with a quiet “thank you,” and offered her own hand to help her onto the stage, but Akira didn’t take it and lifted herself onto the platform without assistance. The Maiden peered through the gap between closed red curtains behind her and called out, “Hello?” before walking through. 

“You’re back, Hinami-chan,” a voice that Akira recognised as Nishio’s replied behind the curtain, and she poked her head past the dusty hangings. Nishio was sitting in the corner of the dark stage, his hair messy and dark bags underneath his eyes. His glasses reflected the light shining past the curtain as he looked over to Akira, “You found Mado-sensei.” 

The Flower Maiden smiled and rushed over to Nishio, who shifted slightly, and Mado realised that there was something behind him, blending into the black curtains that were drawn along the back of the stage. At first she thought it might have been some sort of animal or even some blankets, but as she got closer Mado realised that it was a person, lying on their stomach and wearing long white clothing that was stained red. 

“How is she?” asked the Maiden as she approached, and Nishio moved to the side, letting Akira get a better view. It was a young woman, from what Akira could make out, with long purple hair flowing down her back and onto the floor next to her. Her eyes were closed behind a pair of cracked glasses, and as Akira moved closer, she could tell that the dark stains on her white dress were blood.

Nishio watched the Flower Maiden sit next to her, and replied to her, “No real changes since you last saw her, she hasn’t woken up yet.” 

Akira moved closer to Nishio and the Maiden and knelt down next to the injured girl, lifting her hand and finding a slow, but steady pulse. She could hear her breathing softly in her sleep, unbothered by the people around her. “What happened to her?” 

Nishio leant back and crossed his legs, “She was shot from what I can tell, they took her from the Barracks as well.” 

Akira studied her face, trying to recognise her features, but coming up blank. She was very young, barely older than a teenager and too young to even intern at the laboratory. Maybe she was an off-duty soldier that was shot while unarmed? “I’m surprised she’s still alive,” Akira started, and looked back to Nishio, “What have you done for her so far?” 

Nishio shifted the woman slightly, showing Akira her bandaged lower leg, bound in scraps from her dress. “I checked over her wounds. It looks like there’s an entry and exit wound over here, so one of the bullets passed through. I was trying to dig out this bullet in her back when Hinami-chan showed up.” 

Akira gave him a confused look, and he pointed to the Flower Maiden. She’d moved, and was now sitting cross-legged next to the woman and had placed her palms flat on her back, near the dark red stain. The Maiden inhaled a deep breath and when she opened her mouth, she began to sing. 

It was a high-pitched, slow tune in a language that Akira couldn’t identify. The Maiden’s eyes were closed shut as she focused on her song, the lyrics echoing around the stage area and the empty ballroom eerily. As she continued, her hands began to glow faintly, and Akira stumbled back slightly on Nishio in surprise. The golden glow of the Maiden’s hands got brighter and brighter, lighting up the area and casting shadows behind her as her song got louder and louder, before she let out a final note and the glow suddenly disappeared. The Maiden toppled over backwards, and Nishio jumped up and rushed to her side. 

Akira’s attention immediately turned to the sleeping woman in front of her instead, and she untied the loose, makeshift bandage Nishio had placed on her leg where there was a whisp of the golden glow the Maiden had called. She expected more blood, but instead of a raw, open wound, there was a large scab forming as if it was a video of its healing playing in fast-forward. The scab began to heal over and slowly scrape away, only for the fast-forward to suddenly stop, leaving the wound still inflamed but much better off. Akira looked back to the Maiden in surprise, who Nishio was helping to sit up again. 

“I have slept too long,” she said quietly, a delicate hand moving to her forehead, “I cannot do any more for now, but she will recover.” 

Akira opened her mouth to ask what the Maiden had done, how any of that was scientifically plausible, but was interrupted by the sudden coughing of the wounded girl beside her. She’d seemingly regained consciousness, and moved her hand underneath herself in an attempt to pull herself up, and Akira carefully held her shoulders and helped her into a sitting position against the stage’s back wall.

The woman adjusted her crooked and cracked glasses and studied Akira’s face, and then looked to Nishio and the Maiden. She rubbed her eyes behind the red frames and shifted her leg so that she could get a better look at the wound on her leg, her hands trying to feel the wound on her back. “What happened?” she asked slowly with a weak voice, looking around. “Where am I?” 

“An airship belonging to a Noble named Eto,” Akira answered when Nishio and the Maiden didn’t, before trying to urge the woman not to stand up, “You were shot, do you know anything about that? What’s your name?” 

The woman looked back at Nishio and to Akira, and then stared at the Flower Maiden sitting quietly before her. She adjusted her glasses again, and put her full weight on her back, groaning as she did. “I don’t know where I am, or how I got here,” she said eventually, “My name is Rize Kamishiro, can you help me?” 

\--- 

Touka was pissed off. The two idiot wolves she’d picked up seemed absolutely clueless about pretty much everything - what sort of idiot tries to break into one of the Lord’s Domains with a tracker on them? She didn’t have a clue how they’d managed to last so long without ending up as mounted heads on someone's trophy wall. 

On top of that, they seemed to somehow be caught up with the Lunar Flower Maiden, which was certainly a name she hadn’t heard in years. She couldn’t help but feel a little apprehensive, but she felt that was fair if two strangers took you to what had apparently been the home of the mythological figure that your father had abandoned you for as a child. 

She glanced sideways at the pair of idiots - they were standing on the edge of the rooftop and looking down to the pedestrians on the ground stories below, panting. They were absolutely useless, when she’d gotten them to that balcony at the Barracks they’d panicked and she’d practically had to push the yellow-haired one off when they insisted they couldn’t jump across to the next building’s roof. They were wolves, goddamnit. They were built to run and jump, not freak out and whine. 

That same yellow-haired one pumped his fist suddenly, loudly congratulating himself and the other one for making it across so many rooftops, and Touka rolled her eyes. They were stupid, and useless, and idiots, but she couldn’t help but be reminded of when she’d first been on the run with Ayato. It put her back in the shoes of her younger self, struggling to figure out how to live in the city without their father’s help. Goddamnit, she was getting sentimental in her old age. 

“What are you planning to do from here?” she called out loudly, sitting in the shadow of a tin overhang attached to a shed on the top of this building. The rooftop was ten or so stories high on what looked like a half-abandoned corporate building, and the only access from the ground was via an external stairwell, so hopefully they wouldn’t be bothered if they stopped for a break. They hadn’t made it too far from the Barracks, but since they’d covered the distance by moving across the rooftops, it would take any humans responding to those CitID alarms a while to catch up. 

The two useless wolves walked over to Touka at the sound of her voice and sat down in front of her, and she looked over them again. They were both on edge, but the yellow-haired one seemed downright cheerful compared to the anxious mess that was the black-haired one. That one was wearing a bunch of bandages in addition to the eyepatch covering his weird wolf’s eye, and something about him seemed familiar to Touka, but she couldn’t quite figure out what it was. 

“What _can_ we do from here?” the black-haired one said shakily, “We don’t have any money, any identification, and we’re wanted by the police.” 

“I guess they won’t be letting me volunteer anytime soon,” added the yellow-hair, “We’re officially criminals on the run!” he seemed a bit too enthusiastic at the proposition, and the black-haired one shot him a horrified look. 

“You have to leave the city,” Touka ignored the loud one, “You’ll have to get to another city, get some forged documents and use them to get a new ID. Pick a city far enough away and with a Lord that doesn’t like ours, so if the cops here put out a request for information it won’t be filled.” Yoriko always said that she was only tough on the outside and far too nice on the inside, and with how she was babying these two idiots she couldn’t help but curse that nice part of herself. Was it because they were wolves as well, she felt some sort of responsibility to keep them alive? 

“Leave the city? But I’ve never even been outside.” squeaked the black-haired one, and Touka pursed her lips. Would they listen to her, or what? She just wanted to help them, _just shut up and let her help him_. 

“You better get used to it then, because that’s what being a wolf is,” she spat suddenly, and they both flinched back at her words. “You’ll live on the edges of society, constantly paranoid that someone’s going to figure out that you don’t belong and when they do, you _run_. You run, because otherwise you’re going to end up extinct and stuffed in the Lord’s halls. And that’s where you’re going to end up if you don’t just shut up, and do what I’m saying.” 

The three wolves all looked at each other in silence for a few heartbeats that seemed far too long. The black-haired one was shaking, and had stumbled back a bit, the yellow-haired one seemed to just be stunned. Touka sat up straight and shook her head, and ran a hand through her fringe. She bit at her lower lip out of habit, what was she supposed to do with them now - 

“I’m sorry.” 

“I’m sorry about this,” the yellow-haired one said slowly, his eyes shifting from the ground to Touka in front of him. “Kaneki and me - I can tell that we’ve been through pretty different stuff than you, and you’ve obviously had it a lot tougher than us. I’m sorry that you’ve had to deal with all that, I can’t even really imagine what you must’ve been through.” 

Touka stopped for a bit and gave him a confused look - he was apologising? For being yelled at? Nobody apologised to _her_ after she yelled at them, they just, ran off like Ayato or went very quiet and didn’t speak for a while like Yoriko, or just avoided her as much as possible like the other kids at school did. 

The black-haired one stumbled a bit, and then looked to Touka as well, “I’m sorry too,” he added cautiously. “I do really appreciate that you’re trying your best to help us, especially when we’ve just met like this. I understand if you’re sick of us, though, especially since I’m such a novice to all of this,” he waved in a general motion around him to accentuate his words, “But we did make a deal to help you find your brother, and I’d be happy to see that through, Kirishima-san.”

Maybe they weren’t as stupid as she’d thought at first - still stupid, just not as stupid. 

Touka took a deep breath and sighed, “It’s Touka. Touka Kirishima.” She watched the two of them share hopeful looks, and she groaned - her sentimentality was going to get her killed one of these days. She still hadn’t fully figured out why she was trying to help them - she supposed it just felt like the right thing to do. Yoriko would appreciate her trying to do more things for others, at least. “What were your names again, I’ve already forgotten them.” 

The blond one gave her a deadpan expression, but the black-haired one bowed low without hesitating. “I’m Ken Kaneki, please just call me Ka -” 

“Yeah, you were Just Kaneki, that’s right.” Touka nodded, vaguely remembering their conversation on the way to the lab. “And you?” she turned to the blond one, who put a hand behind his head.

“Hideyoshi Nagachika, but you can call me Hide, Touka-chan.” he said cheerily and Touka glared at him - _don’t push it_. Kaneki held his hands up defensively in front of Hide and his sleeve shifted, giving her a better look at the bandages along his arm. 

“How bad are your wounds?” she asked, and Kaneki glanced from his bandaged hand to the other dressings on his leg. The blood that had seeped through the cloth seemed to be dried, but anyone covered in that many bandages was a worry. 

“Oh, I’m not sure, really. I got shot at, but it’s been treated and I can move alright. Shouldn’t we focus on finding your brother?” he replied, and Hide poked his arm without warning and Kaneki hissed at his friend in pain. He mentioned a fight, but he hadn’t mentioned being shot at. He seemed far too timid to be involved with gangs and raids like Ayato, so she wondered how that had happened. 

“We should fix that, and hopefully Ayato will hear it,” Touka said, taking in another breath. If - or really, when - her brother got violent, she didn’t want these two limping around and getting in the way. You’ve got to heal your party before you fight the boss, Yoriko would say about the computer games Touka watched her play. 

She dropped her human form and tilted her head at Kaneki, who gave her a confused look. The black-haired teen was shaking slightly at the sight of her wolf form, and she watched him twitch as she moved slightly. For a wolf, he sure seemed afraid of others, she thought. Maybe the only reason these two had lasted so long was by ignoring that they even were wolves. But Kaneki, he seemed to not know anything at all about being a wolf. “Just follow along.” she said softly, in an attempt to be comforting.

Kaneki gulped and put on a heavily-concentrating expression, closing his visible eye tightly. Touka gave Hide an inquisitive look, who waved it off, “He just does that.” 

When Touka looked back, Kaneki was the white wolf that she’d got a glimpse at in the prison cell. Hide grinned and quickly dropped his human form as well, replaced by a brown wolf, although his wolf was still wearing the headphones his human had around his neck. As wolves, the two of them were only slightly larger than her, she noticed, neither looked like they’d ever been in a real fight. When she got to Ayato, he’d realise quickly that they were practically domesticated pets. Well, she could hope that meant he’d go easy on them. 

She breathed in slowly and then raised her head towards the dome-covered sky, and howled the first few notes of the melody that she’d been taught when she was just a pup. Hide seemed to recognise the tune and joined in quickly, Kaneki only howling after they’d repeated it the first time. After he’d picked it up, she changed her tempo and the song changed into rounds, the notes overlapping each other and taking on a new life. She hadn’t heard wolfsong with three voices since before her father left, she realised, and something about it seemed much more comforting than when she howled alone.

When she opened her eyes, she could see the soft golden glow around Kaneki’s bandaged wounds. She ended her howl and was followed by the others, Hide neatly finishing the melody and Kaneki cutting off mid-way when he realised he was the last one left. 

She changed back into her human form and moved over to Kaneki, removing his bandages slowly. He looked closely at his foreleg with his now matching, yellow wolf’s eyes and opened his mouth in surprise - “It’s healed? How did you do that?”

Kirishima shrugged, she’d never really questioned it, the same way she’d never questioned wolves turning into humans. “It just works. My Dad used to call it a prayer to the moon, but I just call it a wolfsong. You need to get it exactly right though, or it won’t work. And it works better with more people, and on a full moon.” 

“My mum used to sing it to me as a lullaby when I was a kid, but with words and stuff. I didn’t know it could do that, though,” Hide added, changing back to his human form as well. “Maybe it’s in that book Kaneki, Mum called it the Flower Maiden’s Lullaby.” 

Touka shrugged, watching as Hide removed the bandaging on Kaneki’s back leg and threw the bloody wrappings away with a gagging noise. Kaneki tested putting his full weight on the leg, and then sniffed at it for a second, before relaxing with a grin. His attention was quickly turned away to something else, and his ears pricked up. “I can hear another wolf howling.” 

Touka turned to the direction Kaneki was facing - of course, it was towards the shitty slums that her brother called home. Even if she hadn’t been able to tell it was her brother's voice, she should have guessed, as he didn’t really have anywhere else to go. “That’s him.” 

“Why didn’t you howl for him earlier?” Hide asked, scanning the horizon and trying to locate the howling’s source. Kaneki sat down and made that stupid-looking concentration face, and promptly changed back to his human form. 

“I did, idiot.” Touka replied sharply. What, did he think that she was as stupid as him? “He didn’t respond, and he wasn’t at home before. So that’s why I figured he got arrested. In any circumstances though, he’d only answer me if he had a good reason.” 

“A good reason?” Kaneki asked, adjusting the eyepatch he wore over his wolf’s eye. 

“It means he wants something.”


	9. expression / run like a wolf

Amon’s hands shook as he looked down the rifle’s scope, trying to lock onto the target. There was a movement in one of the windows and he shifted the weapon accordingly, aiming shakily at the dark shape of the supposed wolf. 

He exhaled steadily, and blinked, Amon’s hands moving towards the trigger on instinct, only to stop when he focused in on the target. 

It wasn’t a wolf at all, it was a kid. Just a teenager, looking down at him from the building above, his long hair and scarf moving slightly in the wind in a way that suggested a dog’s ears. Amon sighed, and lowered the rifle. 

“What are you doing, Amon?” Mado’s voice screeched beside him, and he opened his mouth to respond but he was interrupted, “It’s the wolf, take the goddamn shot.” 

Amon’s attention turned back to the kid in the window, but he was gone. 

\---  
_earlier_

Amon had bit his tongue while Nakajima and Kusaba had been in the room and the old man had embarrassed him in front of them. He’d bit his tongue as he walked down the stairs, followed by Mado, still going on about his goddamn wolves. 

“The Lord and Akira, it’s all connected,” Mado said, although Amon wasn’t really listening to him, “Those detectives did say that they found animal hair at the scene with the Lord. And Akira works with the Flower Maiden, you said?” 

“The Lord keeps pet dogs,” Amon replied absently, scanning a keycard and walking further downstairs. 

“That’s what the wolves would like you to think!” Mado grinned, and Amon turned away from the old sheriff. “It’s all planned, you see. Revenge on the city’s Lord for taking the Flower Maiden away from them. They revere the Maiden as a goddess, you know? They must have taken Akira because of her relation to their goddess, that much is entirely obvious.” 

Amon let out an audible groan in response as they reached the lowest floor and finally turned to look at Mado, realising he was at his last straw with the old man. “There is no goddamn wolf conspiracy, old man. There is no fucking wolf plan to kill the Lord, there are no fucking wolves. All the wolves are _dead_. Even if they weren’t they’re just fucking oversized dogs, they can’t plan anything! There was an airship spotted in the North and the Lord was killed with a sword, what imaginary wolf of yours is going around in an airship with a sword?” 

Amon’s fist collided with the wall next to him and Mado’s mouth closed. Amon blinked for a few seconds, before adjusting his collar and swallowing nervously - he never spoke out like this.

He’d always bit his tongue around the sheriff for Akira’s sake, always just smiled and nodded when he’d brought up those goddamn conspiracy theories about wolves taking over the world. The old man had always been obsessed, swearing that they were demons and other things that Amon couldn’t bring himself to care about after hearing it repeated so many times. 

He’d always been polite for Akira, and now she was gone, and the old man wouldn’t shut up about the goddamn wolves as always. Amon couldn’t deal with the wolf rubbish now - he had bigger things to worry about, Akira was gone, the City’s Lord was _dead_. Nobody knew what was going on, and he was being followed across the city by a retiree armed who thought everything had a secret wolf-themed agenda. 

He’d fought with Akira over it before, trying to insist that they take the old man to some sort of home, but she’d always refused. She was too soft on him, and so he kept wandering around the continent chasing after wolves. He never found any, because there were no wolves to find. There was never any wolves, but he’d never be able to reason with the old man. 

The old sheriff pursed his lips and looked up and down Amon, “Perhaps I put too much stock in my daughter’s judgement.” he said shortly, and Amon brought his hand to his temples.

He felt like yelling at the goddamn old man, this is what he was focused on when his own daughter was missing? Amon couldn’t deal with this, what was he going to do with him? What even could he do with him? The old man didn’t have a ID for the city, so his options were already limited - 

Amon’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of a voice, and he looked behind him. His eyes glanced around for a few moments, trying to identify his surroundings. He’d barely paid any attention to where he went, just wanting to get away from his office and the subtle, judging looks of the other detectives when Mado had started going on about wolves. He recognised he was on the basement floor, where the lockup for suspects and detainees was. The cells were empty, bar one, where a teenager with bright blond hair and dark circles drawn over his eyes was poking his head through the bars. 

“‘Scuse me sirs, but you were talking about wolves?” he asked, and Amon rolled his eyes.

“This is not a subject that concerns you,” Amon growled harshly, seeing Mado’s attention had turned to the kid in the cell and groaning internally. 

“Well, sir, you say that, but I thought you might wanna know that I’ve seen one. A wolf, I mean.” The teenager replied plainly, his hands fiddling with the chunky earrings set in his ears. “And I’m pretty sure I could tell you where to find him.” 

Mado rushed over to the cell’s door, and looked to the detainee with an unsettling sheen in his eyes that Amon hadn’t seen before. “You saw a wolf in this city? It was definitely a wolf, and not a dog, yes?” 

“For sure,” the teen replied, and Amon felt like storming over to his cell and shutting his mouth up forcefully. The kid must’ve seen his vicious expression, and leaned up against the back wall instead, and pointed a finger at Amon. “Y’see, yous were saying that there wasn’t any wolves that could fly a ship or hold a sword. Well, this wolf, he wasn’t just a wolf, is all. He was a person too.” 

Amon rolled his eyes and kicked the bars of the cell, making the teenager jump in surprise. “You can shut up now, I’m not interested in hearing this bullshit.” What was the kid on, to think Amon wanted to hear a fairy tale about a wolf person, especially right now? 

“Ah well, the wolf part is up for you to believe.” the kid shrugged, and fiddled with his hair. “But you’d be wanting to get everyone who was in my gang, right? This guy was one of the leaders, and he got away. I can take you to him.” 

Amon let out a deep sigh, “You can give me a location.” 

The teenager frowned, “Aw, but he might not come out if a bunch of cops show up on their own. You want me to come with yous, he’ll be trusting then.” 

Amon looked to Mado to judge his reaction, but the older man avoided his gaze. He supposed that made sense, he wouldn’t exactly want to be chummy with someone who’d yelled at him either. He sighed - the kid was probably off his rocker, but he’d have to write down any ‘tips’ he was given, regardless of how dubious they sounded. “And you’re certain that this guy is one of your gang leaders?” 

“Absolutely positive,” the teenager replied, making a mocking cross over his chest. “Watcha say, detective? Want me to show ya?” 

“I’ll talk to your case manager. No promises.” he replied abruptly. Amon didn’t really need to talk to a case manager, he had authority over anyone who’d been brought in with relation to the raid the night before. And while he had priorities, the teenager’s words intrigued him. 

Specifically, the part where he’d started talking about how a wolf was also an extra gang member. He didn’t think there was any truth to the wolf part but there being a missing gang leader matched other witness reports and what they’d gotten out of the other gang members. 

But mostly, he was interested in bringing in this supposed ‘wolf’, and sitting him down in front of Mado, and making it obvious that there were no goddamn wolves, not in the city, not in the gangs, not anywhere. It was wishful thinking that Mado would accept this as proof, but Amon was being partially fueled by spite and a lack of leads on Akira’s front at this point. 

Mado followed him to the front of the lockup without saying anything, not interrupting as Amon spoke to the clerk at the front about the prisoner. He supposed that the old man’s pride had been bruised.

Amon left him standing in the hallway for a few seconds to visit the armoury, and looked around the assorted weapons on display. He grabbed his usual pistol from the rack, and then noticed a hunting rifle behind it. How that was supposed to be used for routine police work was beyond him, but the irony of bringing it on a supposed wolf hunt wasn’t lost on him. He lifted it up and slung it over his shoulder. Mado only seemed to perk up when Amon walked back to the teenager’s cell with the keycard the clerk had given him. 

“Alright, Naki-san. You better be onto something.” 

\---

The kid was disappointed that he’d been handcuffed the second he left his cell, which made Amon smirk to himself. He figured the kid had expected a better chance at getting away from them, which was why he’d offered to show them to the supposed wolf-ganger in the first place. Amon didn’t care about their supposed broken snitching code, but he did acknowledge that the teenager seemed to be earnestly leading them to a gang hideout. 

According to the clerk at the lockup, they didn’t have him on the citizen records and wouldn’t give him anything other than the name “Naki.” They had his prints on file however, and a number of previous crimes had popped up in the database, even if he didn’t have legal citizenship. To make sure someone who had been avoiding prosecution didn’t get away, his cuffs were attached to a chain clipped to Amon’s belt. The detective felt like he was walking a dog, if walking a dog was normally a wild goose chase to spitefully prove something to your father-in-law. 

Naki led Amon and the silent Sheriff Mado through the city towards the slums, stopping for a bit to gain his bearings in a half-abandoned residential area. Amon watched the people sitting in the shadows of the incomplete buildings, calling the children back when they passed. He couldn’t blame them, typically the only reason police would come to this area of the city would be to move homeless folk on.

Amon glanced sideways to Mado - the old man hadn’t said anything yet, but his eyes still had that off-putting glow that’d shown up when the kid had mentioned a wolf. He carried his shotgun in his hands instead of slung over his back, and jumped sharply at any sound he heard, ready to point the gun at anything he deemed sufficiently wolf-like. 

Naki stopped eventually at a large dead tree, what would have been the centrepiece of a small park in between the buildings if they had finished construction. Instead, it just sat as a decaying shape amongst the other decaying shapes of the buildings. The teenager squatted on the ground and Amon tugged at the chain to get him to move along, but instead Naki pointed to one of the bare window-shaped holes in the closest structure. 

This area of the dome was barely lit by the panels of the roof, so it was dim even during the middle of the day. At first, Amon couldn’t see what he’d meant from the shadows that were hanging over the building, but eventually he caught it - a winding trail of smoke that escaped out the window and a soft orange glow that hinted there was a fire lit up there. “That’ll be him.” Naki said, leaning against the dead tree and putting his cuffed hands behind his head. 

“How are you sure?” Amon replied, and the teenager shrugged nonchalantly. 

“He’s the only one that got out. And up there’s where he lives, don’t think he’d let someone move in.” He fiddled with his hair as he spoke, and then looked behind Amon and Mado, “That a friend of yous?” 

Amon followed his gaze, noticing someone dressed in the long white overcoat of the detectives. It was Takizawa running towards them, panting and waving some papers in the air above him. He reached them eventually and bent down, wheezing, before passing the papers to Amon. “Th-there was … Citizen ID pings at … at the crime scene with Mado-sensei.” he spluttered between his heavy breaths.

Amon skimmed the documents - they were printouts of the data received from the Citizen IDs, with a picture and some of the details of the person in question. He didn’t recognise the picture on the first page, but read out the name - “Ken Kaneki,” before flipping to the second page. “And Hideyoshi Nagachika? Isn’t that the volunteer?” 

Mado’s head instantly picked up and he swiped the documents from Amon’s hands. He clicked his tongue but didn’t say anything. At least the pings at the crime scene would give him some sort of lead to follow. 

“Th-that’s right.” Takizawa panted, fishing around in his pockets and finding a bottle of water, which he then downed. “The IDs were found destroyed at the crime scene, I’ve got them bagged up as evidence. I went to find you, but you were gone and then I had to run through the city -” Takizawa babbled on without a response from Amon. 

“You wouldn’t know either of those two names, would you?” He asked Naki, who was still leaning against the tree, but the teenager shook his head. He doubted it was linked to the gang activity, but the gang had been active on the same night Akira vanished. 

“No siree.” he replied, “But if you’re planning on catching my guy, you might wanna hurry it up.” 

Amon’s gaze turned towards the building as Naki indicated, noticing immediately that there was a face in the window now, looking down at them. 

“Wolf,” Mado growled warningly, immediately pointing his shotgun up at the building. Amon grabbed the weapon from the defiant Mado and instead pointed his own rifle at the window - he wasn’t going to have the crazy old man shooting at a dog again. 

Amon’s hands shook as he looked down the rifle’s scope, trying to lock onto the target. There was a movement in one of the windows and he shifted the weapon accordingly, aiming shakily at the dark shape of the supposed wolf. 

He exhaled steadily, and blinked, Amon’s hands moving towards the trigger on instinct, only to stop when he focused in on the target. 

It wasn’t a wolf at all, it was a kid. Just a teenager, looking down at him from the building above, his long hair and scarf moving slightly in the wind in a way that suggested a dog’s ears. Amon sighed, and lowered the rifle. 

“What are you doing, Amon?” Mado’s voice screeched beside him, and he opened his mouth to respond but he was interrupted, “It’s the wolf, take the goddamn shot.” 

Amon’s attention turned back to the kid in the window, but he was gone. 

“It wasn’t,” Amon slung the rifle back over his shoulder, “It’s the kid we’re after. And now we need to move fast, because he knows we’re here.” 

\--- 

“You’ve got guests.” Touka’s voice was curt, and Ayato glared back at her. He could see the goddamn detectives downstairs, and that piece of shit Naki with them. He’d supposed it’d been wishful thinking on his part assuming that Naki would have been killed. 

“And who are they?” Ayato replied, pointing at the two guys following her like lost puppies. They were both a little older than him, but one glance and he could see that he’d be able to kick them both out the window if he wanted to. The shorter of the two, with black-hair and an eyepatch that covered one of his eyes, looked like he was going to fall over in fright if he looked Ayato in the eyes anyways. “You decided you do like boys, then?” 

“Shut up, asshole.” Touka crossed her arms forcefully, and Ayato snorted. “They’re wolves.” 

“Yeah well, they fucking stink of human.” Ayato replied, lunging forward and dropping his human guise, baring his teeth at the three intruders. Touka seemed unmoved but the other two flinched backwards. “They're pets too, then?” 

“What do you want, Ayato.” Touka growled, looking down at his grey wolf in her human form. “You wouldn’t answer a howl if you didn’t want something.” 

Ayato sat down and rested on his haunches, pausing a few seconds before responding. “It’s time to move on, big sister. You saw the cops outside.” 

“There’s cops outside?” The shaking, black-haired one squeaked, and Ayato growled at him. 

“Oh, I’m supposed to drop everything because you’ve fucked up?” Touka replied angrily, “What if I’ve still got a life in this city?” 

Ayato gritted his teeth - he’d expected this. She’d spent far too long cozying up with humans in that School, gotten too close to them. He glanced at her arm and spotted a small silver reflection of the firelight, the bracelet she’d gotten from that schoolgirl she was attached at the hip to. It was as good as a collar. She was too busy pretending to be a human to be a wolf. But even if she was ignoring her instincts, she wouldn’t let him go alone. If anything happened to him, she’d never forgive herself. 

“You heard me, _pet_.” he spat the last word venomously, trying his best to get under her skin. “Either you stay here alone or you come with me.” He knew that’d annoy her - as much as she acted like she hated him, they both knew she’d always refuse to let him get too far away. 

“Where are you going?” one of the tag-alongs asked, the one with bleached-blond hair and an offensively brightly-coloured green jacket. 

“Why should you care?” Ayato growled threateningly, but he answered the question regardless. “We’ve got an uncle in the Third City, he can get her papers and send her back to a school with the humans she likes.” 

The black-haired one and yellow-haired one exchanged glances with each other, and Ayato turned back to Touka, who dodged his gaze. Her hand was caught on the lock of her bracelet. “Clock’s ticking, sis.” 

“C-could your uncle get us papers, as well?” the black-haired one stuttered suddenly, and Ayato glared at him down his long snout. 

“What makes you think I want you two to come with me?” he growled, and the black-haired one took a step back, shaking in his boots. Touka stepped in front of Ayato, blocking his view of her shitty lackeys. 

“Fine, I’m coming.” She said quietly, putting her hands in her blazer’s pockets, and Ayato smirked. “But, you have to bring those two.” she pointed a finger in the direction of the quaking black-haired one and the annoyingly bright yellow-haired one. 

“What! Touka-san, I can’t ask you to do that!” the black-haired one waved his hands in the air, and the yellow-haired one echoed, “Touka-chan, are you sure?” before Ayato could voice his own annoyance.

Touka closed her eyes for a few seconds, and took in a deep breath. “Yes. Wolves have to keep moving, and you two need a pack.” 

Ayato rolled his eyes at her collection of pets, and moved over to the empty window frame. It looked like there was another cop below them now, he didn’t seem as heavily armed as the other two though. He’d definitely need to watch out for that old guy’s shotgun. 

He looked back to Touka and her tag-alongs, who seemed trying to convince her that offering to bring them was a bad idea - which might have been the first smart things they’d ever said in their lives, Ayato thought. He didn’t want to babysit two idiots she’d dragged out of the trash somewhere, but when he looked down at the gathered police officers below, he did like the idea of having more moving targets than just himself for them to shoot at. 

“And what’s your plan for getting out of here?” Touka asked her brother when the other two’s chatter had died down. She looked around her, tracing the rusting beams holding the structure up with her eyes. “We can sneak out the back over that side -” 

“No,” Ayato interrupted, his tongue lolling out of his maw lazily, “Head-on assault, right now. If you want to bring those two, they’ve gotta show me they aren’t useless.” 

Touka’s two lackeys’ mouths dropped in unison, but she merely shrugged her shoulders - “Fine. But I’m not howling for you when you get hurt.” 

“If I get hurt,” Ayato replied with a smirk, “We’ve got to move right now if we’re gonna get 'em by surprise.” 

“R-right now?” The black-haired one started, and Ayato nodded.

“I probably should have mentioned that he’s a dick,” Touka said, pointing her thumb in Ayato’s direction before dropping her human guise, “Just, watch what I do and follow your instincts. Don’t think too much about it.” she added in her dark grey wolf shape. 

“We’re leaving now? But -” the black-haired one’s wobbling voice was interrupted before he could finish his thought. 

“God, how domesticated are these two?” Ayato growled loudly, but Touka didn’t acknowledge him. 

Her lackeys exchanged looks for a few seconds, and the yellow one nodded eventually, encouraging the other. He bounced on the balls of his feet for a few seconds, seemingly hyping himself up, and dropped into his wolf form. He was a skinny, dusty-brown wolf, and Ayato was glad his wolf wasn’t as painfully-coloured as his human. His wolf was wearing the same bright-red headphones around his neck the same way Ayato’s would wear his purple human scarf, which he decided would make a great target for the police below. 

Almost as if responding to Ayato’s thoughts, there was a crashing noise below as someone broke down the rusting tin barrier that had been blocking the entrance to the building below. The cops were inside the building. Ayato glanced at the black-haired wolf, still in his human shape. 

“C’mon, Kaneki,” said the headphones wolf, and the black-haired one nodded hesitantly. He closed his only visible eye and made a stupid face, and became an almost pure-white wolf. At first, Ayato thought that he might actually have some muscle on him, but then realised that his coat was just extra-thick compared to his own. 

Touka looked at him with dark amber eyes, scratching at the ground with her claws. Ayato could see that stupid bracelet from the human was still on her, even as a wolf. He bit back a remark, and instead glanced out the window again. “Let’s go.” 

\---

They were leaving the city. Kaneki was going to leave the city. He’d never been outside the dome in his whole two decades of living, and the idea scared him. To be fair, most of the circumstances he’d recently found himself in scared him - the wolves were scary, the soldiers were scary and everything that had happened in the last 24 hours had been truly terrifying to the Kaneki who was used to all his excitement coming from a good book at home. And now he was going to go and do something even more drastic and terrifying, but somehow, a part of him was excited?

His whole world had been contained within the tall, crumbling walls of the Seventh City, and the once-sturdy ground had fallen apart beneath his feet. He was being cast out of the society he’d once belonged to - or was he just finally bold enough to consider that there might be an option that wasn’t staying inside the city forever, pretending to be content? If it wasn’t for the wolves, it was possible. 

Well, he didn’t have much of a choice. He had to run, like Touka said. There was no place for him now in the Seventh City - he had no money, no identity, not even a way to get back to his home. The only family waiting for him at home would be the aunt and cousin who didn’t hide their hatred of him, and his only friend would move on without him if he hesitated now. He’d only just dipped his toes into this wild, chaotic river that the wolves had introduced him to, and now he needed to dive in and swim before he drowned. 

He supposed that now, sitting in this eerie and rotting building, surrounded by the dark shapes of the three other wolves, he was more free than he’d ever been as the human Kaneki. The wolf Kaneki could escape, but there was still one final barricade that stood in front of him. 

He could see their shadows on the bottom storey as Touka’s brother led them down to the lowest floors, the three detectives that stood as the final barrier. Ayato needed Kaneki to prove himself as a wolf, and Kaneki needed to prove it to himself as well - prove that it was all real, and he was doing it. In the past, Kaneki had never been at all sure about himself and what he was to do in life, but this was the new final trial - he needed to burst through the last wall and confront who he was now. 

Even if he understood even less of who he even was anymore, the small amount of time he’d spent as a wolf with Hide and Touka helped encourage him to face the fact that, for now at least, he could be a wolf. Thoughts about returning to humanity and reversing Rize’s curse could wait until they reached Touka’s uncle in the Third City. Right now, Kaneki was a wolf, and the wolves had to run. 

Ayato paused at the bottom of the lowest staircase, flicking his tail. “Make sure they won’t follow us. And I’ve got something to say to the one in chains, don’t interrupt me.” 

Kaneki sniffed the air hesitantly, mimicking Touka next to him. There were a lot of scents in the air and he tried his best to pick them out with his inexperienced nose - himself and the other wolves, the stale smell of the other humans who’d lived here, the rats that hid underneath the floor and in the walls, the burnt ashes of long-dead fires. And blowing in from the door was the scent of the detectives, of crisply-starched fabric, gunpowder, and cologne. Kaneki paused for a second - something seemed oddly familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He would have pondered it longer if he wasn’t interrupted by Ayato moving quickly in front of him and clearing his throat loudly - “We’re moving now.” 

Ayato dashed ahead with a loud snarl, around a wall partition where Kaneki couldn’t see him, and he heard the surprised yelps of the humans reacting to the grey wolf. Touka raced ahead as well, Hide followed her, and Kaneki realised that his paws were moving as well, he couldn’t be left behind. He rounded the final deteriorating wall and came face-to-face with the detectives. 

On one side, a tall, dark haired detective was struggling to unsling a rifle from his back, connected to a chain he held was a teenager with almost platinum blond hair in handcuffs, his eyes wide in surprise. Ayato made a beeline for the latter, jumping into the air and slashing the teenager’s chest with his claws, blood blooming and dripping through the teenager’s clothes. Next to them, another young detective with lighter brown hair, shaking in his boots, only armed with a pistol, and behind him - Kaneki’s breath hitched. 

“It’s him,” he spluttered as he made eye contact with the old man at the back of the group, the same old man who’d fired on him only yesterday. His shotgun was pointed at Kaneki and the adrenaline that had been powering him left him in a second, his run coming to a complete halt - 

“Get out of the way!” Hide yelled suddenly, running against Kaneki forcefully and pushing him to the side. A second later, there was a flash and gunsmoke filled the arena. Kaneki’s head whipped around, trying to see where the bullet had gone, had it hit Hide?

“I’m fine,” the brown wolf brushed up against him, panting, and Kaneki breathed a sigh of relief that the shot had missed its target. He looked back to the old man, who was preparing another, and Hide followed his gaze - “I’ll get him, you get the tall one.” 

Kaneki nodded hesitantly, looking at the tall detective, who’d managed to unholster the hunting rifle on his back by now. The teenager hooked to his belt was trying his best to escape Ayato’s fangs and pulled at him, knocking the detective off-balance. Kaneki had to move now - what would he do? 

He shook his head and ran, his claws clattering against the concrete beneath him as he raced forward, and then he jumped upwards. He jumped, and collided with the tall detective, knocking him to the ground in a forceful tackle of sorts. Kaneki stood over the detective, his fangs bared and breathing down on the fallen officer, staring into his face. His yellow and black wolf’s eyes connected with the dark eyes of the human’s. 

What does he do now? Part of him said he needed to go for the throat - strike the throat and kill him, and kill him instantly. Was that a wolf’s instincts? He couldn’t possibly do something so cruel - this was a person, he couldn’t do that to living, breathing person - 

“Kaneki, quick!” Hide’s voice broke through his worries, and he looked over - the brown wolf had grabbed the old man’s shotgun in his maw and torn it away from him, making a beeline for the building’s entrance. Touka and Ayato followed after Hide’s lead, and Kaneki could see the blood dripping from their fangs, he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t do that, what should he do? 

He glanced back at the detective beneath his paws, and the man took his hesitation as an opportunity to knock Kaneki away. The white wolf bared his fangs as his weight shifted and slashed with his claws on instinct, delivering a fine slash across the detective’s cheek, four thin red lines across his otherwise unmarred face. Kaneki’s eyes widened as blood dripped from the new wound and he looked back to Hide, waiting for him at the entrance, the discarded shotgun at his paws and the old man pelting towards him, yelling. 

Kaneki had to run. He ran, and so did Touka and Ayato and Hide. Ayato broke to the front of the makeshift pack, leading them, and Kaneki glanced behind him. The tall detective, still dragging the bleeding teenager behind him and uncaring for his own wounds, followed behind, the old man trying his best to keep pace. Kaneki kept running. 

Ayato led them through the dusty streets and then downwards to the train tracks, the southern line that would exit the city. Kaneki ran across the tracks behind him, towards the short tunnel that led outside, the cold of the dome’s snowy exterior slowly growing as they got closer. They reached the entrance of the short, brick tunnel, three of the wolves ducking underneath the barrier closing it. 

Kaneki paused at the exit - this was it. The end of his life within the domed walls of the Seventh City. He looked behind him, listening for the shouting of the humans who’d chased after them.

The tall detective stood above him on a raised passenger crossing, holding his hunting rifle and pointing it directly at Kaneki’s face. For a second, Kaneki felt himself waver - he wasn’t a wolf, just a boy that was barely a man, with the barrel of a gun pointed at him - and then he swallowed his fears and turned back to the tunnel, and ran like a wolf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone leaving me nice comments :3


	10. expression / snowing outside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: depiction of animals hunting + eating other animals, marked by an asterisk * in the text at the start and end of the scene

Amon’s finger wavered across the trigger of the rifle as he tried his best to quickly adjust the scope, shaking. Three of the wolves had dashed underneath the rail safety barrier and down the tunnel that led out of the dome, but one had paused and turned around. It was the pure white wolf that had attacked him, had knocked him to the ground and bared its fangs in his face. And when Amon had thought it was going to finish him off, the wolf just … stopped. 

He’d stared into the animal’s golden and wild-looking eyes, and realised that behind the feral-looking snarl was a look of hesitation, worry, maybe even fear of Amon himself. Something about that expression had seemed so plainly human, and out of place on the animal. 

Amon looked down his scope at the final wolf, its long white fur fluttering behind it in the wind blowing inwards from the tunnel. He blinked, and when he looked again, it wasn’t the wolf standing on the train tracks, but a young man - really a boy, no older than twenty, wearing a thin blue jacket and jeans and one shaking arm latched onto the other nervously. He looked up to Amon with an anxious expression marred by his mismatched eyes - one regular and human, and the other that same violent, wolfish gold, peering out from behind an ill-fitting medical eyepatch. And then in a second he was gone, and the white wolf was there instead. The animal turned, ducked underneath the barrier and Amon cursed. 

He fired a single bullet far too late, and it ricocheted off the dark bricks, missing any target that would have been there. Amon lowered his rifle slowly and brushed his hand against his stinging cheek. His hand and the cuff of his white jacket came back stained red, and he realised that he was bleeding. Had the wolf attacked him after all? 

The wolf - or was it a boy? It hurt him enough to admit that perhaps Mado had been right to claim that the wolves were as smart as humans, but they weren’t actually humans, were they? It was impossible that the massive pale wolf with vicious fangs and claws could be the tiny, shaking boy that he’d seen. 

Amon had been awake for far too long, and the wolves of Mado’s dreams were coming to get him. He didn’t know what to think or what to do, anymore, and he didn’t have Akira to give him any words of wisdom or comfort. 

“Amon!” a voice called behind him, and he saw the sheriff Mado hobbling in his direction, rushing to the train bridge. The old man was far too late, and he looked to be in far worse shape, with one of his legs drenched in dark red blood. He used his shotgun as a makeshift crutch, but the barrel was partially crushed and indented with fang marks - one of the wolves had grabbed it, hadn’t they? 

“They’re gone.” replied Amon as the old man made it to his side, indicating to the train tunnel below. “The - the wolves.” it was hard for him to say the last word out loud, a small part of himself unwilling to admit that he’d been wrong to the sheriff. 

Mado didn’t seem to notice his hesitation and simply nodded, squinting at the rail tunnel below. “Where do these tracks go?” 

“South, to the Sixth City -” Amon started, “You’re going after them?” 

“Of course,” the old man growled, annoyed Amon had even asked. “They’re the only clue I have to find Akira. Got to add those bastard’s pelts to my collection.” 

Amon found himself nodding along absently and then stopped - what happened to Takizawa? Where had the prisoner Naki gone? The loop on his belt the chain had been attached to had snapped at some point, was it during the scuffle where the other wolf had attacked the teenager? And what about Takizawa, when he last saw him he’d been on the floor, howling in pain. He had to get back to him, radio for assistance. 

“Where are you going?” Mado asked as Amon turned to head back to his fallen coworker. “We’ve got work to do.” the old man sneered, pointing towards the tunnel.

\---

The outside world was bright - far too bright. When he first exited the dark train tunnel, Kaneki thought the wolves might have led him to the edge of the world, where nothing lived and everything was just a painful white that stretched on forever. When his eyes eventually adjusted to the light, he could make out the endless, clouded sky and the railroad tracks in front of him, and the softly-falling snow - the outside was cold as well. It was cold, and it went on forever in every direction. 

The cold and wet against Kaneki’s fur made him shiver, but Ayato, Touka and Hide kept running, so Kaneki kept running as well, the four wolves racing across the pale snowfield, even after his paws grew tired and sore. They ran on for what seemed like years, eventually leaving the icy train tracks in search of a destination Kaneki hoped the other wolves knew how to find. The snowing slowly stopped as the clouds parted above, and as the sky grew clearer Kaneki looked upwards and saw the deep blue of the sky for the first time. 

Of course, he’d always known that there was a sky outside the dome and what it was in theory, but finally seeing it first-hand shocked him - he hadn’t known it was so wide, so all-encompassing and so empty. And the sun, the sun was so bright! It was just a small shape above them, but it illuminated everything far brighter than the domed city’s lights had in a warm glow, and left fuzzy shapes in Kaneki’s eyes when he looked at it for too long. He felt lost and a little unsafe without the reassuring city dome above his head, worried that the giant and uncaring blue abyss above would swallow him for daring to step outside his home. 

As the bold sun began to dip beyond the horizon, the wolves slowed down and stopped at a small cave, damp and half-covered by the snow. Kaneki dashed inside quickly, grateful for the enclosed space so that he wasn’t further threatened by the darkening sky above. He panted and fell to the ground exhausted, landing on the rock floor as a human. 

The cave was cold, and he expected it to be colder against his human skin and thin clothing, but it wasn’t as harsh as he’d figured. It was almost like his thick wolf’s coat was still covering him and protecting him from the snowy weather outside. 

Hide gave a few loud exhausted noises and fell on top of Kaneki dramatically, who pushed the sweaty wolf off his back playfully. Hide nipped at his fingers playfully and sat down in his human form, “God, my feet hurt.” 

Kaneki nodded in agreement as Touka and Ayato slunk into the cave behind them, panting as well. Touka flopped to the ground on her side, with a tired groan, but Ayato instead walked directly up to Kaneki and bared his teeth at him. 

“You didn’t do it.” the dark grey wolf growled darkly, and Kaneki stumbled backwards to avoid his ire, “I said to make sure they couldn’t follow us, you couldn’t even do that.” 

Kaneki opened his mouth to apologise - it was true, he hadn’t been able to hurt the detective back in the city. Instead, he was interrupted by Ayato continuing - “At least that one managed to bite that old man’s leg.” the young wolf flicked his ears and glanced in Hide’s direction, “Your cop was following us all the way to the tunnel, he’s probably still tracking us now.” 

“Hey, don’t go cussing Kaneki out,” Hide jumped up quickly, putting himself between Kaneki and the annoyed teenager. “We put plenty of distance between us, there’s no way he’ll catch up tonight.” 

“Tonight.” Ayato hissed with a huff, “What about tomorrow? When someone comes at you, you’ve got to make sure you get them bad enough that you’re going to be in a different goddamn city by the time they’re feeling better. Even better if there’s no way for them to come after you.” he barked at Kaneki - “You barely even scratched him.” 

Hide snarled and his shape shifted, his skinny brown wolf now staring down the imposing, dark grey canine. He bared his teeth at Ayato, “Leave him alone, asshole. I was the one who told him to run before he even had a chance to go at the guy.” 

Ayato growled back at him and Kaneki stood up suddenly, realising he needed to intervene. He pushed at Hide’s shoulder in an attempt to shove him away, trying his best to separate them before a fight broke out and Hide got hurt on his behalf. 

“Look, I know I messed up.” Kaneki said apologetically as Hide continued to bare his teeth at the younger grey wolf. “Stop trying to defend me, he’s right.” he elbowed Hide in the neck, who finally stopped his snarling and looked up at Kaneki with big yellow eyes and a frown. 

“It’s not your fault, though,” Hide protested as he switched back to his human form, running a hand through his bleached hair and shooting Ayato another dirty look. “You’re a beginner with the whole wolf thing, how are you supposed to know what to do?” 

“You’re both useless pets,” Ayato grunted at them in response, earning himself a glare from his sister, who seemed to be finally acknowledging the others, and gave him a solid kick from one of her back legs. 

“The white one’s basically a pup, dumbass,” she sat up as a human, and ran her hand past her nose. She pointed in Kaneki’s direction, “He’s a half-breed, can’t you smell it?” 

Ayato regarded Kaneki judgmentally with his amber wolf eyes and gave him a hesitant sniff, “I didn’t know there were human-wolf half-breeds.” 

“I thought you were cursed?” asked Hide softly, and Touka shrugged. 

“Dad used to say that the Nobles from before the War were humans directly descended from wolves. They might be dead, but _obviously_ there’s still people out there with wolf and human blood.” she replied to her brother while looking back at Kaneki, who blinked in confusion. Was it just decided now that he was somehow part-wolf from birth, and he’d never known? 

“I can’t be a half-breed, my parents were both normal.” he replied quickly as Ayato's shape changed from that angry grey wolf to the tall teenager with greasy hair. Kaneki quickly decided that he liked Ayato much more like this, when he looked like just another punk kid, instead of a wild animal that could rip his throat out. Hide continued to give him a dark look next to Kaneki.

“It doesn’t have to be exactly half to be a ‘half-breed,’ idiot.” the long-haired teen barked as he flicked his long purple scarf over his shoulder. “The wolf could have been your grandpa, your great grandma, whatever, it’s just what it’s called. I used to know a guy who was a half-breed, but he was just one small part wolf and the rest was dog.” 

“Half-breed that was part dog? One of his parents …” Hide lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and raised a hand to his mouth, “fucked a dog?” 

Touka rolled her eyes at the boys around her and Ayato snorted, a small smile creeping across his face for the first time since Kaneki had met him. “I mean, I assume that’s how they made the baby.” the teen chuckled. 

Hide made a retching noise, “That’s an animal, though!” 

“You’re an animal, Hide,” Kaneki interrupted cautiously, holding up his hands in surrender when Hide gave him an incredulous look, “I mean, you’re a wolf.” 

“That’s different, I’m like, a person too! That’s just disgusting, and it’s like, a crime.” Hide crossed his arms in protest, “Wolf or not, that’s just something you shouldn’t do.” 

“Yeah, but that’s not the point,” Ayato interrupted the blond forcefully, “The point is he was just a normal-ass dog for like, basically his whole life until he started scavenging with some wolves. And then when he found out that he was part wolf, it turned out he could do the whole human thing too, he’d just never known about it.” the dark-haired wolf waved his hands about in an approximation of ‘the whole human thing,’ before pointing at Kaneki, “Wouldn’t that be what happened to you?” 

Kaneki paused and thought for a second, was it possible that he really had just been like this his whole life? Was that why he’d always dreamed of the wolves and read every book about them he could get his hands on? If he was descended from wolves, it would have to be someone on his father’s side, he decided. His aunt and cousin were far too human, and they’d always treated Kaneki as if he was a freak - did they know about wolves? It wasn’t like he could ask them anymore. “I think that makes sense? I was normal until I ran into Rize …” 

“You were with a Rize? Rize Kamishiro?” Ayato jumped up quickly, and Touka made a small whistling noise and clapped her hands together - “That’s why I thought you looked familiar, I saw you with her, the other day.” 

“You know Rize?” Kaneki asked of Touka instead of replying directly to Ayato, as she didn’t have a vicious expression on her face at the mention of the name. 

“Well, not really,” Touka waved it off, “She was just one of the wolves who hung around near my dad when we were in the Tenth City. Ayato got into a spat with her once, she won.” she added with a grin in her brother’s direction.

Ayato clicked his tongue and crossed his arms with a huff, “I was thirteen, shit wasn’t fair at all. I could beat her easily now.” he looked accusingly at Kaneki as he sat back down, “What were you doing with the bitch, anyway? Where is she?” 

“She’s --” Kaneki paused for a second, thinking about how to phrase the next few words, “The last time she and I - she got shot. By that old man who was with the detectives before. She’d attacked me, and then he was there with the shotgun -” 

Ayato turned up his nose, “Good for her, then. Asshole deserves it.” 

Kaneki paused for a second, thinking to himself. He’d seen Rize shot and lying on the ground helpless, and while at the time he thought she was done for, he wasn’t so sure now. She’d seemed to know things about the wolves, like the wolfsong, so was it possible that she’d lived and healed herself? Wouldn’t he have seen her, or even heard her at some point, then? It didn’t seem feasible, but even though she’d attacked, Kaneki hoped that she hadn’t been killed in that street. Being put down unceremoniously in the dark city streets by a mad old man felt just too cruel to him. 

“We thought Kaneki got turned into a wolf because she’d bit him,” Hide added to bridge the gap in conversation, jostling Kaneki out of his thoughts. “Y’know, like a werewolf.” He held his hands up in the shape of claws and gave an impression of a howl. 

“You’re both absolute idiots,” Touka gave Hide a deadpan look, and he put his hands in his pockets sheepishly, “Idiots that keep watching old movies. You’re just a normal wolf, aren’t you? Wouldn’t you know that’s not how it works?” 

“How am I supposed to know everything about wolves just by being one?” he replied in a small huff, leaning back against the small rock wall. “I didn’t know about that wolfsong howling stuff. The only other wolf I knew was my mum, and she’s been gone for years. Left when I was little.” Hide scratched at the hair on the back of his neck awkwardly.

“I never met my mum,” Touka replied casually, sitting up straight and flicking her long bangs. “Our dad tried to look after us when we were younger, and kept us moving around. When we were a little older, he said that we were good enough to be on our own and ran off. That’s why we came to the Seventh City in the first place, ‘cos I heard he was here and thought I could track him down. Didn’t work, obviously.” She finished quietly, her finger tracing in the dirt next to her. 

Kaneki drew his legs up to his chest hesitantly, thinking about how it seemed that all of them had spent a lot of their lives without parents. At least Hide and Touka had said their parents had ‘run off’, in a way that seemed to imply that they weren’t just dead, like Kaneki’s. “Do wolf parents normally run away from their kids?” He asked quickly, then closing his mouth suddenly when he realised that might be a touchy subject.

To his relief, Hide just shrugged and the others didn’t seem bothered. Touka brushed the dirt off her school uniform’s skirt, “I mean, some do, decide they’re gonna find Paradise and leave their kids behind. You’d think they’d stick around for their own kids, but apparently not.” 

“Paradise?” Kaneki asked, and Ayato stood up suddenly and turned back into his wolf shape, with a grumble about how he ‘didn’t care about that shit and was going to stand watch.’ Touka kicked at him as he passed, but he didn’t retaliate. Kaneki supposed that was just a sibling thing.

“Yeah, there’s a Paradise with the Flower Maiden,” Hide said enthusiastically after the teenager left, giving Kaneki a sideways look. “It’s like, part of wolf folktales and myths. Stories that parents pass down to their pups.” 

Touka nodded, glancing at Kaneki, “I suppose you wouldn’t know anything about it. Do you still have that book the cat gave you at the lab?” 

Kaneki dug into his jacket’s pocket and pulled out the leather-bound novel, brushing off some grey cat hairs and waving it in Touka’s direction. 

“That book’s got all the stories my dad was obsessed with, it looks like,” she said as she took the book from Kaneki and flipped through the pages, stopping at that illustrated two-page spread he’d spotted at the lab. The pictures were harder to make out in the dim light of the cave, but Kaneki could spot the shape of the Flower Maiden, and the wolves running towards her open arms. 

“That’s Hinami, the Flower Maiden,” Touka said, pointing to the figure of the girl at the centre. “She’s meant to be like a goddess, I guess. She was sent by the spirit of the moon to watch over the wolves in the form of a girl with eyes like flowers.” she paused for a second, scanning the image with a small sigh. “I thought that part was meant to be figurative when my dad told the stories, but then I found out that the Seventh City had apparently gotten hold of this alchemical masterpiece. It was an actual, living girl, made from Lunar Flowers by Nobles from before the war.” Touka pointed towards the trail of large white flowers under the illustration of the wolves, and others that made up the patterns of Hinami’s dress. “I think that’s why my dad went to that shitty city, he was looking for her.” 

“So that laboratory was all set up to look after the girl, who was made from flowers?” Kaneki stopped, thinking about the dream where he’d seen Hinami being stolen from the laboratory. It all seemed unreal to him, was it really possible that a girl had been given life from a plant? “Why did the Nobles make a girl to match a folk tale?” 

“For the Paradise,” Hide interrupted, looking over Kaneki’s shoulder at the book and making him jump slightly, “That’s the reason why Hinami’s so special, because she’s supposed to be an emissary who can lead wolves to the promised Paradise.” 

“Hmm,” Kaneki pondered this for a few seconds. A girl made from flowers who would lead you to a promised land certainly sounded like a folktale. Well, at least as much as wolves turning into humans did. “What’s the Paradise supposed to be like?” 

Touka and Hide both gave him a sort of noncommittal shrug, “It’s just like, a Paradise, man.” Hide said eventually, “It’s meant to be the perfect land for the wolves, not all broken and rusting like the cities, I guess. My mum said it was like, the wolf heaven.” 

“It’s meant to be beautiful, filled with the Lunar Flowers” Touka added, flicking through the pages absently before inhaling sharply, “But hey, that’s the main reason why a bunch of wolf parents run away. They decide that they’re gonna find Hinami and the Paradise, and leave their kids behind.” 

“And do any of them really find her? And then go to the Paradise?” Kaneki asked as Touka flipped the book’s pages, stopping occasionally to examine an illustration. 

“I mean, if the Paradise is even real, nobody’s ever found it. Like Hide said, it’s a folktale.” Touka said as she closed the book, pushing it back into Kaneki’s hands. “When wolves go looking for Paradise, they either end up dead or coming back empty-handed. And my dad’s never come back, so …” she trailed off, her voice sounding forlorn. 

“But the Flower Maiden is actually real, right?” Kaneki asked hesitantly. He’d seen her screaming for help in his dream, and they’d explored the laboratory she’d been kept in, so there was no way she was just a legend as well. 

Touka tilted her head to the side, and shifted so that she was leaning against the wall opposite Kaneki and Hide, “She might be real, and know the way to Paradise, or she might have just been a weird project by a Noble with too much time on their hands.” 

The conversation seemed to stop there, so Kaneki skimmed through the book again. While the tale of the Flower Maiden leading wolves to the Paradise was the main feature of the novel, most of the other stories contained within _’Prophecies of the Red Moon_ ’ didn’t seem to be prophecies at all. They were instead just simple moral tales like you might find in any children’s fairy tale book, just featuring wolves and occasionally the Maiden as an oracle that the characters could seek advice from. Interestingly, while the Flower Maiden was always named Hinami, it wasn’t always the same Hinami across every story. In some, she was an old lady who lived in an ancient forest guarded by thorns, and in others she was a wise and caring mother who had a pack of wolves as her children. In others still, she was a young girl gifted with divine wisdom, which seemed to be the version that had influenced the large illustration in the centrefold. Kaneki supposed that if these were all myths passed through generations of wolves, it would make sense that she might have evolved across the stories. 

The next morning when Kaneki awoke, he was hungry. There wasn’t exactly a fast food outlet nearby where they could exactly purchase food, and Touka said that they’d need to catch food for a few days before they reached another settlement. The idea of hunting down and eating raw animals didn’t exactly make Kaneki very enthusiastic, but he and Hide tried their best to chase some small birds that were roosting nearby. They didn’t catch more than a few tailfeathers, and while Kaneki did think if he’d kept it up he might have got one, Touka had yelled at them to stop wasting their energy and looking so pathetic. 

That second day passed slowly, and thankfully at a slower pace than the breakneck sprint yesterday had been. The wolves began following a thick river that ran in the direction the sun rose from, partially frozen along the edges but still flowing in the centre. Kaneki had at first been overjoyed to be travelling alongside a source of water, considering their lack of food, but quickly found himself disappointed when he tasted it and found that it was salt. 

“It means we’re getting closer to the ocean,” Touka laughed as Kaneki spat out the saltwater in surprise. Hide tried to drink it regardless, and ended up gagging. “There’s a fishing town where the river meets the sea, we can get real food there.” 

So far, being a wolf had been tiring, hungry and cold, and the amount of running he had to do and the growling of his stomach made Kaneki consider if he’d really made the right choice leaving the city. At least in the snowfields he wasn’t getting shot at, he guessed. 

On the second night, there wasn’t any proper shelter alongside the river, so the wolves burrowed a hole into the ground and slept within the makeshift ice cave. Hide curled up as close to Kaneki as he could, saying that he had shorter fur and needed to use him as a hot water bottle. When Kaneki woke the next morning, there was another layer of snow above them that had fallen the previous night, and the river had completely frozen over. He wondered if he could walk across it now, but Hide said he shouldn’t try if he didn’t want to fall through the ice. 

As they kept moving, the slower pace meant that they could talk amongst each other as they travelled. Hide regaled everyone with stories from when he was in highschool, most of which Kaneki recognised because he was involved in them somehow, but there were a few unfamiliar tales that revolved around adventures he’d had as a wolf. Touka talked about the different cities and towns she’d lived in before the Seventh City, and about her roommate Yoriko, her best friend. She was upset at herself for having left Yoriko without so much as a goodbye, so Kaneki suggested sending her a letter when they arrived at the fishing village. Ayato didn’t talk much, only interjecting occasionally to argue about details in Touka’s stories and tell Hide (and sometimes Kaneki) he was an idiot. Kaneki didn’t have many of his own stories to share, but tried his best to keep up polite conversation. 

During the afternoon of the third day, Ayato stopped the group suddenly and pointed his snout towards a nearby valley filled with snow. The valley was short, and a shape that suggested there was typically a stream that ran to the larger river during the summer. Halfway up the small walls of the valley was a trio of dark shapes moving through the snow. Kaneki squinted hard to make them out - at first he thought they may have been people, but they were too big and moving too strangely to be people. Hide asked loudly, “What is it?” 

“Elk. They’re not normally this far north at this time of year, we’re lucky.” Touka replied, her eyes on the large animals passing by. The elk didn’t seem to have noticed the four wolves nearby, and were moving at a relatively slow pace. “How many are there?” 

“Three, two big ones and a baby,” replied Ayato, “Come on.” he turned towards the deer, flicking his tail at the other wolves. 

“We’re really going to hunt them?” Kaneki said, suddenly confronted with the idea of having to hunt down and kill a real, alive animal. His stomach seemed to growl angrily in response to his discomfort. Ayato trotted towards the direction of the elk, and turned around to give Kaneki an annoyed expression with his wolfish face. 

“What do you think we’re gonna do, nature photography?” the teenager replied, turning back to the elk moving on behind them. Touka moved over to her brother's side and flicked her tail at him as he continued, “Aren’t you hungry?” 

Kaneki paused for a second - he was hungry, very hungry even, but his entire life he’d gotten food from a market shelf. At no point in his life had his dinner been anything more than a small square of shrink wrapped meat, let alone a whole animal that was walking through the snow. He gulped - well, this was what wolves do, he supposed. “Are the elk like, smart like the cat at the lab? Can they talk?”

Ayato made a clicking noise with his tongue in annoyance as Hide moved over towards them. “Everything can talk in it’s own way, Kaneki. You just gotta listen.” the brown wolf said as he did, which did not make Kaneki feel any better in the slightest. 

“Well, what should I do, then?” he asked hesitantly, shifting from paw to paw and looking back to the large shapes moving by. One of the deer had stopped and was looking in their direction, flicking its ears. Kaneki tried not to look at its large, brown eyes. * 

“You don’t have to do much, just stay behind us when we chase them. When one gets separated, flank its sides so it doesn’t have anywhere to go. Deer can’t move as fast as wolves in the snow, we’ll be able to catch up.” Touka said confidently, and Kaneki blinked and nodded slowly, trying to memorise the instructions. Ayato took off towards the trio of elk without waiting for them, and Kaneki found himself dashing across the snow behind him, trying to catch up. 

The three deer had noticed the four wolves running towards them, the two larger ones letting out braying noises and headbutting at the baby one before they all took off across the snow. Ayato snarled and sped up, slowly closing the distance between them, with the other wolves on his tail. 

Kaneki could see that Touka was right, the elk stumbled and sometimes tripped in the deeper snow as they ran, giving the more sure-footed wolves time to catch up. The smallest elk let out scared, high-pitched noises as it fell behind the two larger ones, and Kaneki tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his throat when he realised he was probably going to be eating that poor baby deer for dinner. 

Ayato was almost matching pace with the youngest elk when Touka suddenly sped up and dashed ahead. She bared her teeth threateningly and lashed out towards the deer’s back legs, trying to clamp down on one with her jaws. The elk brayed for help from the two larger ones who had left it behind, and attempted to kick Touka with its back leg. She dodged its strikes nimbly as Hide and Kaneki caught up, and Hide attempted to nip at the elk’s legs as well while Kaneki lagged behind.

There was a crunching noise as Touka’s fangs finally met their mark and locked down on the elk’s rear leg, and she pulled the young deer to a stop mid-stride. The panicked noises grew louder and it attempted to kick her away, but Touka held fast. Ayato moved towards the elk’s neck and bit at it viciously until he got a solid grip, and helped pull the animal to the ground. The elk attempted to kick its feet and escape as Hide and Kaneki circled behind it, until finally being silenced with another vicious bite to the throat from Ayato. 

Kaneki looked away as Touka moved to rip open the poor creature’s stomach, instead looking pointedly at the two other deer who had outrun the wolves. They stopped and watched the predators with their big, soft eyes for a few seconds, before turning tail and running. Kaneki felt like he should apologise to them somehow, but it wasn’t possible. 

When he turned back to the other wolves, Touka and Ayato were loudly ripping the elk apart with their teeth and eating it, arguing between bites about who was a better hunter. Hide moved around beside them cautiously and tore an organ away, looking back to Kaneki with a wolfish smile that was entirely ruined by the blood running down his mouth. Kaneki shivered. 

He walked over to the dead elk’s side and sniffed at it, grimly watching the blood oozing onto the snow and staining it red. Kaneki gulped and closed his eyes - he was a wolf, he was a wolf - and took a hesitant bite - “Thanks for the food.” *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> outside the dome, finally! not sure why my brain was like 'hey you should spend five hours researching how wolves hunt and then write about characters eating a baby elk' but that's in this story now. 
> 
> also - what is the location/setting of this au? i'm not entirely sure, in wolf's rain it's implied that the land was formerly america, even though the main characters have japanese names, so i'm sort of following that? it's not really important considering there aren't any landmarks and all the cities don't have real names, but if you were curious that's the sort of base i'm going from.


	11. everything stays / everything changed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [everything stays - olivia olson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr0UOKd1dd0)

_“Let’s go in the garden, you’ll find something waiting  
Right there where you left it, lying upside down  
When you finally find it, you’ll see how it’s faded,  
The underside is lighter when you turn it around,”_

In Kaneki’s dream, he was sitting in a dusty armchair in the corner of a vast library, illuminated by twin glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The library’s shelves reached from the floor to the domed ceiling above and were covered in books, some with dust layered on them thickly enough to obscure the titles on the spines. 

The room was filled with the faint sounds of a young girl singing, and when Kaneki turned his head, he could see Hinami across from him. She was standing on a table and twirling around as she sang, her clothes flowing around her as she did. 

_“-Ever so slightly, daily and lightly,  
In little ways, everything stays.” _

“Is that true?” Kaneki asked as the Flower Maiden sat down and looked towards him expectantly, “Everything … staying?” 

“Well, that’s what the song says,” Hinami replied with a small smile, opening a book at her feet and flicking through the pages. Kaneki watched her curiously - this was the first time he’d really seen her up close, moving like a normal person. But where was he, what was he doing here?

“Where are we?” he asked as she picked up the book, and returned it to an open space on the shelf next to her. “Is this a dream?” 

“That would make sense,” Hinami replied softly, and lowered herself down from the desk she was standing on. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. My name is Hinami, the Emissary of the Lunar Flowers,” she gave a small curtsey, “May I have your name?” 

“It’s Ken Kaneki,” Kaneki replied, unsure what he should do. Should he hold out his hand to shake it? 

“Ken Kaneki, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Hinami replied, taking his half-outstretched hand in hers and shaking it roughly. “How do you spell your name?” 

“You’re not going to … steal my name or anything, are you?” Kaneki replied cautiously, his thoughts turning to stories of fey and other mythological creatures. 

“Steal your name? Nobody’s ever asked me that.” Hinami gave a small laugh, and Kaneki relaxed a little. She seemed friendly enough, at least. 

“‘Kaneki’ is written with the kanji for ‘gold,’ and then ‘tree,’ and ‘Ken’ is written the same way as ‘sharpen’.” Kaneki answered with an awkward waved, and Hinami’s eyes lit up.

She ran back to the table and retrieved a small notebook and pencil, and slowly and carefully scribbled a few shapes on the paper. “Is this correct?” she asked after, holding up the notebook for him to check. 

“Almost! You just missed one of the strokes in ‘Ken’,” Kaneki replied, standing up and taking the pencil Hinami offered to him. He wrote out his name again next to Hinami’s attempt, and she grabbed the paper from him and analysed it. When she was done, Kaneki asked, “How do you spell Hinami?” 

She pouted slightly, “It’s just written in katakana, it’s nothing special.” Hinami flipped to another page in her small notebook, and handed it back to Kaneki - “How would you write it in kanji?” 

Kaneki took the notebook hesitantly, “There’s no specific way to write names in kanji, your parents are supposed to pick the characters that make up the name for you.” 

Hinami frowned and crossed her arms, “Can’t you just pick some characters for me?” 

Kaneki sighed - he didn’t want to upset a child, even if she was supposedly a flower. He thought for a few seconds, and then wrote two characters with Hinami looking intently over his shoulder. 

“It’s the character ‘hina’, which means ‘a baby bird,’ and ‘mi’, which means ‘fruit’, but you can also read it as ‘jitsu’, which means ‘truth’.” Kaneki passed her the notepad hesitantly, hoping that she didn’t mind the kanji he’d picked. 

Hinami’s frown instantly disappeared and she beamed at him, “That’s wonderful!” she placed the notebook on the table and tried to copy the kanji, but stopped after a few seconds, “This one is very tricky, though.” 

“Ah,” Kaneki’s hand went behind his neck sheepishly, “‘Hina’ is rather complicated, let me show you how to write it.” He took the pencil from her and wrote the first character again slowly and in much larger strokes before handing it back. 

Hinami tried writing the kanji again, her tongue poking out of her mouth as she concentrated the task. She checked over kanji again before showing Kaneki proudly, who gave her a small clap in congratulations. 

“I wish I could read all the kanji in all of these books,” she said, throwing her arms open to the shelves around her, “I bet I would know everything, if I read them all.” 

Kaneki smiled - she reminded him of a younger version of himself, intent on reading every book in his father’s collection, even though most of them had been far too advanced for him. Not to mention that some had been rather inappropriate for the age he’d been at the time. 

Hinami spun around on the balls of her feet and then gracefully fell backwards, landing on the thick carpet with a light thud. Kaneki sat down next to her and looked around at the book collection for a title that he recognised, but soon gave up, “There are definitely a lot of books here.” 

He paused for a second, recalling something he’d read in a science textbook. “You said this was a dream earlier? I thought that it was impossible to read in a dream?” 

Hinami sat up and tilted her head at Kaneki, “I’m not sure, Kaneki-san. You’re the one dreaming.” 

He put his hands together cautiously, “Is this real, then? Are … you real?”

Hinami took his paw gently and put it in her small hand, and Kaneki blinked, realising that he was a wolf now. He sniffed, and picked out that familiar scent of Lunar Flowers, intermingled with the dust and old books. “Does it seem real to you?” Hinami asked. 

“It seems more real than any other dream I’ve had,” Kaneki replied, shifting his paw away from her and glancing around the library again. “Where is this place? I’ve never been here before.” 

“It’s the library,” Hinami replied unhelpfully, her hand reaching out towards Kaneki. He shied away cautiously but she placed her hand on his head regardless, and scratched at the fur between his ears. While he wasn’t thrilled at being petted like a dog, he couldn’t say that it was a terrible sensation. “This place is far from the places I know. It’s not on the Lunar Flower’s path.”

“The Lunar Flower’s path? Is that the road to Paradise?” Kaneki asked, echoing the stories of _the Prophecies of the Red Moon_. 

Hinami smiled, “Are you hunting for the Paradise, Kaneki-san?” 

Kaneki turned his gaze away and shook his head slightly, “N-not really.” He hoped that didn’t hurt her feelings. He was just running to the next city, where he could be a human and start over again, wasn’t he? Even with a supposedly mythical figure next to him in this dreamscape, the Paradise still seemed like too much of a fairytale to him. On this blackened and eroded earth, was it even possible that someplace like that truly existed? 

“I think you should,” Hinami continued to stroke Kaneki’s long white fur and her voice grew quieter, “If there’s no one hunting for the Paradise, there’s no reason for me to exist.”

Kaneki shook his long wolf’s fur and the Maiden’s hand away, “That’s a bit sad.” 

“It is?” Hinami asked, “I like having a purpose, knowing what I’m supposed to do. It means that I don’t have to figure out something for myself.” she paused. 

“Don’t you want to choose something for yourself?” Kaneki asked quietly, but the Flower Maiden shook her head. 

“Have you chosen something to live for, Kaneki-san?” she replied, her hand moving to her short bangs and twirling them in her fingers. 

Kaneki turned away, feeling strange, unsure how the conversation had even landed on this topic. 

“I don’t … really have something to live for,” he answered to Hinami slowly, considering his words as he did. “I suppose I just keep going because that’s all there is to do.” That was the reason he’d set out with the wolves, wasn’t it? He didn’t have the option to stay in the city as a human any more, so he had to move on. That was what he said to himself, over and over. 

Hinami smiled faintly, “Don’t you want something more than that?” 

The room turned silent, as Kaneki wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to a question like that. It felt strange to be questioned on what he wanted to do in life in the same way his school guidance officers had always pestered him, and by a child no less. He was cut out of his musings by the echoing sounds of a grandfather clock somewhere nearby, chiming 6. 

Hinami turned towards the direction of the noise, “The sun will be rising soon.” She stood up quite suddenly and brushed off some of the library’s dust that had accumulated on her clothes, making Kaneki jump. “I hope we can talk again. Maybe you’ll have chosen something to live for by next time.” 

Kaneki’s vision grew hazy and uncertain, the slight shape of the Flower Maiden drifting in and out of sight. He could barely make out the small wave she gave as the environment of the library seemed to melt away before him, and her voice calling out, “Goodbye, half-wolf Kaneki-san!” before it all faded to black. 

\---

Akira raised her head off the desk slow, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as she did. It was the start of her third day in the Lord Eto’s Keep, if her estimates were correct. She only had estimates, because there were no windows in this dark, makeshift laboratory she’d been assigned. 

This laboratory, her current home, was quiet and very dusty, and seemed to have been abandoned for many years before her arrival. There were no computers and only a few of the lights worked, and she was only allowed to leave twice a day to visit the kitchen. Akira was expected to sleep in the laboratory, and her only comfort was a coarse blanket she’d found in a cupboard. 

From what she could tell, Eto’s Keep had just as few employees as the airship. The guards that kept watch over her were the same two individuals on rotating shifts, and she’d only seen a few others escorting Eto and the Flower Maiden. There were no cooks, maids or any other attendants, which was a far cry from the extravagant staffing of the Seventh City’s Lord’s Keep. Additionally, she hadn’t seen Nishio or the injured young woman at all since the airship had landed and she was separated from them. The Maiden had assured her that she’d seen them and that they were okay. 

The Flower Maiden would often be escorted to the lab for a few hours, and Akira was instructed to perform checks on her and ensure she was healthy. On the second day, with materials she’d requested of the guards, Akira was able to recreate the nutrient-filled liquid that the Maiden had been housed in back in her old laboratory. To her surprise, there was much more of an impact now the Maiden wasn’t in her hibernation-like state, and she’d gained a more natural colour in her cheeks. Even with the nutrient boost hkwever, she seemed to only be able to stay active for a few hours at a time, and would fall asleep after she’d exhausted herself. 

The way the Maiden talked and moved was so close to a regular child now, that if Akira wasn’t paying full attention, she felt like she was caring for a younger sibling or cousin. And then she’d notice the Maiden’s blood-red eyes, or the scarlet markings etched into her forearms, or run a test on her strange, discolored blood and remember she was instead a lab-grown homunculus. 

The work at the laboratory was rather basic - cleaning up the old lab and its equipment, checking the Flower Maiden’s vitals, and then writing up and organising the results. Now that the Maiden was active again, Akira would have loved to have run proper testing with her team and equipment, but that was far out of reach. Instead, she occupied her mind with the experiments she would have liked to perform, and elaborate escape plans for escaping the Keep. 

She thought often about these escape plans, because if she did, Akira found that she felt less like the captured princess of a fairy tale, waiting to be rescued, even if she did spend her time doing just that. Formulating a way back home seemed a more interesting way to spend her time rather than focusing on the bleak walls and route notetaking of her new routine.

If she was to think about a strategy for breaking free, one of the first things she’d noted was that her guards were very lacking. There was only one that kept watch over her at a time from the lab’s entrance, and he was only armed with a pistol. She supposed that if she could recall her father’s survival training from her youth, knock him out and pilfer the pistol, she could make it fairly far before anyone realised anything was amiss. If she stuck to the shadows and was cautious, she could probably even make it out of the Keep without being seen. 

That would be, if she knew how to get out of the Keep. The entire massive structure seemed to be a maze carved into the side of a jagged mountain, which she’d only caught a glimpse of as the airship had landed. Akira had lost count of the number of stairwells she was led down and had been entirely disoriented on the journey to the laboratory, so she had no clue where she would find an exit.

On one of her trips to the kitchen when she thought she ought to try escaping, she’d snuck away briefly from her escort and found herself lost within a grand wine cellar that she hadn’t known was there until she stumbled into it. The soldier was less than pleased with her wandering, and ever since had refused to let her out of his sight. 

With only that meagre escape attempt under her belt in the three whole days of captivity, Akira knew that her father would have been disappointed. If he’d been kidnapped and tossed into a barely-staffed, rotting castle, she was sure he would have burst his way out much earlier, guns blazing. Maybe if this had happened when Akira was a teenager still living with her father, spending her free time working out and learning survival skills, and not an almost-forty year old who hadn’t lifted weights in a decade and weighed a fair amount more, she would have broken out already as well. But instead, Akira had barely tried, and she frequently wondered to herself why that was. 

Of course, she wanted to see her father and Amon again. But everything since she’d been taken from the Seventh City seemed like a long, strange dream. Everything she did felt inconsequential, and the dark, seemingly timeless laboratory was just a strange fantasy that maybe one day she’d wake up from. Akira spent all of her time in this unending haze, unsure if it was morning outside on a new day, or if she’d even left yesterday behind. She slept whenever she felt tired and woke up feeling exhausted, unable to tell if she’d had a full night’s sleep or if it’d only been a half-hour long nap. She couldn’t orient herself around the trips to the kitchen either, as the guard would only take her when she asked. Akira would just wake up, the soldiers would give her a list of tasks, and she did them, and went back to sleep. 

Perhaps, if she completed all the tasks, they would return her to the Seventh City, Akira wondered. Well, much more likely they wouldn’t, and she’d instead be trapped here for years, not even knowing that the time had passed outside. At times, she felt like she’d already been trapped inside for years. Akira knew that isolation could drive people insane, and wondered if such an insanity was setting in on her. 

A few hours after she woke up, the Flower Maiden appeared for her usual check overs. Surprisingly, she wasn’t just accompanied by the usual guards, but by the Lord Eto as well. The Noble was dressed casually in contrast to the extravagant gold and maroon ensemble Akira had last seen her in. She instead wore a large overcoat, reading glasses and a scarf, but still carried the golden rapier at her hip. Akira was so distracted by the Noble that she didn’t notice the Maiden waiting for her to begin the tests until the girl tugged at her lab coat. 

“Just proceed as you normally would,” the Lord Eto instructed, taking out a small notepad and pen which she waved in Akira’s direction, momentarily spurring her to action. She rummaged through the nearby desk for the stethoscope with hands that were slightly shaking, and then placed the instrument against the Maiden’s back, who sighed slightly as she did. 

Normally, the Maiden was rather talkative when she visited Akira, chatting about the grand library that she was allowed to visit and the books that she’d bring with her to her ‘doctor’s appointments.’ This time, she seemed to be pointedly holding her tongue in the presence of Lord Eto, and didn’t say a word as Akira moved on. She couldn’t exactly blame her, the noble was still just as intimidating in the more casual clothes. 

“The Maiden seems to be stabilising around this level, since she woke up,” Akira said hesitantly to the Lord, holding out a chart with some highlighted numbers to her. The Maiden’s vitals had increased noticeably since she left hibernation, but she hadn’t yet reached the equivalent of a human child’s. Despite this, she seemed to be functioning perfectly fine, so Akira had supposed that this was a quirk of her strange biology. 

Eto’s eyes skimmed across the table that Akira had presented to her, “So she hasn’t moved up in the three days she’s been here?” she asked, and Akira shook her head nervously. 

“It’d be low for a human child, but she doesn’t seem to be having any issues,” Akira glanced at the short brown hair of the Flower Maiden sitting on the stool next to her, “She’s active for about three to five hours at a time before she needs to sleep and recharge, then she -” she trailed off, noticing that Eto’s gaze had turned squarely to the Maiden, and the Noble clicked her tongue. 

“Ah, I thought that might be the case,” Eto said, fiddling with her overcoat, “I think we should work on improving that sleeping schedule, Hinami-chan.” she reached out her hand and ruffled the Maiden’s hair, but the girl didn’t react at all. 

“I can try doubling the amount of nutrients she’s given over the next few checkups,” Akira said, and she paused for a second, thinking about how she’d seemingly accepted that she’d be stuck here forever, caring for the Maiden. Had she accepted it? Was it just that the Maiden was the only fixture of this strange, timeless life she was now leading? 

“Yes, that’s a start,” Eto replied distractedly, digging through the pockets of her large coat for a few moments, before she finally produced a small red tube of liquid. “But firstly, inject her with this.” she said as she passed the tube to Akira, who immediately looked over it. 

“Th-this is blood?” Akira stuttered as she examined the tube, holding it close to her eyes - the liquid inside was unmistakably blood. It was stamped with a small sticker listing what should be yesterday’s date, but no other text. She vaguely recalled the Noble with a similar-looking syringe that she’d injected into the Flower Maiden back at the Soldier’s Barracks, was that blood as well? “This is what you woke her up with?” 

“Wolf’s blood,” Eto answered nonchalantly, looking at the Flower Maiden, who squirmed on the stool next Akira. “Should be more effective than the diluted injection.” 

“Wolf’s …” Akira’s voice trailed off as she stared at the tube in surprise. The Noble had wolf’s blood? Where had she gotten it from? Were there wolves here that she’d drawn it from? 

Akira didn’t share her father’s convictions about the intelligence of wolves, but she did know that they weren’t as extinct as common belief held. She had seen the wolves before. Only once, back in her hometown as a child, running and howling amongst the bright flames that had charred the small village to ruin. 

Was it that this Noble spent her extravagant money to keep wolves instead of staffing her Domains? “Do you have wolves here?” Akira asked hesitantly, and Eto raised an eyebrow at her. 

“Of course,” she replied after a few seconds, adjusting her glasses. “Would you like to see them?” 

Akira’s hands were shaking but she couldn’t be sure why - _did_ she want to see the wolves? The creatures that had destroyed her childhood home, and her childhood along with it? The creatures that had killed her mother and scarred her father when they’d tried to protect har? Did she want to see them and convince herself that she was stronger now, she’d grown and gotten over her past? Or did she think she’d see them and be changed back into the stuttering, shaking child she’d been on that fiery night? 

Akira took a deep breath. After settling her mind, she turned to Eto and gave her a small nod. The Noble clapped her hands together excitedly, “Wonderful, we’ll head down after we finish up here.” 

Akira’s hands continued to tremble and she could feel a sizable lump in her throat - why? Even after all these years, she was still afraid of the wolves? Was that really surprising to her? She blinked and looked down to the tube in her grasp. “I’ll need an IV.” she said after a few seconds, trying to refocus on the task at hand. 

Eto shrugged her shoulders, “She was fine when I directly injected her, wasn’t she?”

Akira shook her head and turned back to the desk behind her, rummaging through the loose medical supplies that were stored there until she found an IV line and needle. “Her biology is close enough to us that doing that again could cause her to reject it, or even overload her system.”

The Maiden’s red eyes were disappointed as Akira approached her side again with a needle, her mouth in a tight-knit frown, but she didn’t resist as Akira pulled her arm and injected her with the needle hooked to the tube. 

Was the girl mad because this was wolf’s blood? She remembered that in the mythologies that she’d been fashioned after, the Flower Maiden was the patron of wolves, which might be the source of her discomfort. Akira used a syringe to set the tube of blood into the IV line, and noticed the Maiden casting a dark look in Eto’s direction. The Noble either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and told the Maiden to wait there while she and Akira went downstairs in her strange upbeat and uncaring tone. 

Akira’s visit ‘downstairs’ was much further into the Keep than she’d been allowed before. Eto led her and some assorted soldiers through the dark, maze-like Keep until they reached a set of silver elevator doors, which surprised Akira to see. She’d assumed that there were no elevators since she’d been dragged through innumerable flights of dusty stairs and to a technologically-lacking laboratory, so seeing a pristine, regular elevator felt out of place by comparison. She noted Eto had to insert a key in order to get the elevator to arrive, and that they were currently on the 38th floor, of what appeared to be far too many for her to count. 

They left the elevator on the 55th, the doors opening smoothly to reveal a hallway lit by buzzing LED lights, far brighter than the lights on Akira’s floor, making her squint her eyes.

The 55th floor was not a mess of hallways as the 38th was, but instead a single corridor that stretched on and on. The walls were lined with cages that Akira assumed would typically house animals, with dirt floor and thin wire mesh pulled across the gaps in larger bars, but they all appeared to be empty. 

Eto’s eyes immediately fixated on a cage towards the end of the corridor and took off in its direction, holding the hilt of her rapier out so that it rattled across the bars of the cages and made an ominous, echoing noise as she moved forward. Akira followed her hesitantly, holding her breath. 

A few steps ahead of her when she reached the end of the hallway, the Lord came to a sudden stop and wrapped her hands around the cage’s bars, calling out as she did; “I’m back, my dears.” There was a harsh growl from the cage in response, and Akira steeled herself as she reached Eto’s side. 

There were two of them, the wolves. One was a dark black with shaggy fur, teeth bared at the Noble and Akira beside her. The other was a dusty brown, gnashing its teeth threateningly at the Lord as well until it spotted Akira at her side. 

It blinked its yellow eyes at her, opened its mouth, and then to her surprise, the wolf wasn’t a wolf any longer, but instead the young laboratory intern who’d argued to be taken onto the ship with her, Nishio Nishiki. He only said, “Mado-sensei.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've always been iffy about song lyrics in fics, i hope it wasn't too obnoxious. 
> 
> sorry about the huge delay for this one i ended up scrapping it and reworking it twice and i'm still not entirely sure i'm happy with it. i'm also back to working most days so i have less time to write.  
> sidenote - [i drew this](https://www.furaffinity.net/view/40212807/) a while ago and meant to link it here, it's just a sketch of kaneki and hide i did on holidays :3


End file.
